


i'm not a bird (i'm a murder of birds)

by connorswhisk



Series: losers/lovers [7]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst angst angst angst angst, Anyway uh, Character Study, F/M, I Love Stanley Uris, M/M, Multi, couldn't help myself, he loves mike!! and he also loves patty!!, i am v v proud of this i think, rip to all the unresolved stanlon tho, shameless self-projection, suicide TW, thats kind of on me tho lmao, this is my magnum fucking opus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: ~~Here are the facts. This is what Stan knows: His name is Stanley Uris. He is almost forty years old. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Patricia. He is an accountant. He likes to watch birds. He has just gotten a phone call from someone he knew a long time ago, and has subsequently remembered his entire childhood and everything in it.Everything.~~
Relationships: Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: losers/lovers [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1499480
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	i'm not a bird (i'm a murder of birds)

**Author's Note:**

> nobody: 
> 
> me: *projects onto stan as much as fucking possible*
> 
> title taken from murder of birds by jesca hoop and guy garvey

For as long as Stanley Uris has been alive (which, to be fair, isn’t very long), he’s always seen himself as normal. Ordinary. He’s never thought of himself as anyone special. He’s too quiet, too closed off for that. He’s not shy, but he isn’t very social, either. He doesn’t think that that’s a bad thing. It just makes him a little different from the others.

But he’s still a normal boy. He rides his bike. He watches cartoons. He plays outside just like any other boy his age.

He isn’t special, and he should accept the fact that he’s never going to be. He’s never going to be important. He’s never going to be famous (not that he wants to be). He’s never going to be much of _anything_ at all.

“Don’t say that,” Mom tells him. “You’re not _normal._ You’re my special boy, Stanley.”

But of course he is. Every mother says that to her child.

Stan smiles, though it comes out more like a grimace.

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Stanley,” Dad says to him. “Kids may make fun of you for being the rabbi’s son, but I don’t want that to discourage you from staying faithful.”

Stanley hadn’t said anything about kids making fun of him, because kids _aren’t_ making fun of him.

Not yet, at least.

But kindergarten comes, faster than Stanley had expected it to, and things are a little different now than they had been in preschool.

For one thing, there’s more kids around. There’s all of the kids Stan had gone to preschool with, plus all the kids whose parents _didn’t_ send to preschool who are starting school now. It’s a little overwhelming, starting the year off with twice the number of kids as before. At least, it is for _Stan._

For another thing, that’s just the kids in his _grade._ He goes to elementary school now, and there’s tons more students, all older and bigger than Stan. It makes Stan feel small, walking down the halls in the faces of the older kids. And if it’s Henry Bowers, a second grader who’s already mean enough to have a posse of cronies following him around, then Stan feels especially small. He doesn’t know how his dad knew, but Bowers is the type of boy that Dad had warned him about. The one who calls Stan a “Christ-killer,” and knocks his kippah straight off his head. That one.

This is the first time Stan ever feels less than ordinary. This is the first time he’s ever had to _question_ who he is, what he believes. So what if he’s Jewish? A lot of people are. There are less Jewish children at school than there are non-Jewish children, but that doesn’t mean Stan’s not alone in the tormenting. Bullies tend to target him more, because they know his dad is Rabbi Uris, and Stan has no Jewish friends, so there’s no one to share his pain in that regard.

Which brings up the final thing: Stanley has exactly one friend, and he’s really annoying.

Wait, but that sounds _mean._ It’s not that Stan doesn’t _like_ Richie, it’s just that Richie is...well, he’s very _different_ from Stanley. In almost every way possible. He’s loud, and abrasive, and obnoxious, and he’s always getting in trouble with the teacher, but Stan still thinks he’s the greatest person he knows.

He doesn’t know _why._ But Richie has this quality to him that Stan admires, and they get along, when, by all means, they should be at each other’s throats. But just because Richie can be annoying doesn’t mean he’s not _funny,_ and Stan doesn’t get irritated with him often. He makes it seem like he does, but he’s really just happy that _anyone_ wants to be friends with him at all.

“Stanley the Manley,” Richie says one day. “Why do you hang out with me?”

Stan frowns. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully.

“Is it because I’m just so _handsome?_ ” Richie asks, batting his eyelashes coquettishly, but Stan can see a flicker of sincerity in his eyes, like he genuinely doesn’t understand why Stan hangs out with him.

Stan rolls his eyes. “No, Richie.”

“Well...why _do_ you?”

Stan contemplates it for a moment.

“I guess...,” he says slowly. “I guess it’s because you’re different than me.”

Richie blinks. Clearly this isn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “What? That sounds more like a reason why you _wouldn’t_ want to hang out with me.”

Stan shrugs. “I think I just needed a friend who wasn’t exactly the same as I am. That would be boring. And what’s that thing they say about magnets? Opposites attract? Yeah.”

Richie smiles. “That’s so _sweet,_ Stanny-boy.”

“Don’t you _ever_ shut up?” Stan asks, but there’s no heat in the words, none at all.

Stan loves Richie, because he’s his best friend, his _only_ friend, and Stan is glad to have him in his life at all. The problem is, Stanley’s parents _don’t_ like Richie.

The first time Richie comes to play at Stan’s house, he makes an awful lot of noise. Stan can tell from the looks on their faces that his parents had obviously not been expecting someone like _this_ to be Stan’s best friend, so he takes Richie outside where they can be as loud as they want to be.

When Richie leaves, Mom breathes a sigh of relief.

Stan frowns. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Mom says. “But Richard’s very _interesting,_ isn’t he? I could hardly focus on my work.” She laughs lightly, like it’s all some joke.

Stan scowls. “He’s my friend.”

Mom looks surprised. “I know! He’s just very...well, he’s very _loud._ Are you sure you like hanging out with someone so... _loud?_ ”

“Of course I do.”

“Stanley,” Dad says then. “What your mother is trying to say is that we thought you would befriend someone a little more like yourself. Someone a little more...clean. Quiet. Richard is none of those things.”

“Why does it matter?” Stan asks indignantly. “He’s my _friend._ ”

“We’re not saying he’s not your friend!” Mom exclaims, in that vaguely passive-aggressive way that Stan hates.

“It just might be better for you to align yourself with people more like you,” Dad says. “So you can...stay in your comfort zone.”

“I’m not uncomfortable with Richie,” Stan says truthfully, but it’s like they don’t even hear him.

And, yeah, maybe Richie’s loud. And maybe he’s dirty. And maybe he’s not perfect, but _no one_ is, right? And Stanley _likes_ hanging out with him. He’s also the only person who _wants_ to hang out with Stan. He’s not giving Richie up that easily.

Besides, Richie may call Stan’s bird-watching lame, but Stan knows he doesn’t really mean it. And when Richie goes bird-watching with Stan, he sits patiently and asks questions about all the birds that fly by. Mom’s always saying to be friends with people who encourage your hobbies and interests instead of making fun of them or putting them down. And that’s what Richie _does,_ so why don’t Stan’s parents like him?

It makes him mad, a little.

But Stan doesn’t care what his parents think. He’s going to be friends with Richie forever, because why wouldn’t he be?

Mom and Dad still don’t like Richie, but they _do_ like Bill and Eddie, so that’s a start. Stanand Richie befriend the pair of them about halfway through the school year. Stan likes them a lot, and he’s glad his parents _at least_ approve of _them._

Bill is very polite and well-mannered, so every parent immediately falls in love with him. Stan looks up to Bill. Bill stands up for Stan against Bowers and his gang, because Stan doesn’t usually say anything back when they make fun of him. He never wants to start anything, or draw attention to himself. But Bill can say anything to Bowers, consequences be damned, and he won’t even flinch. It’s...well, the only word for it is _cool._

Eddie is also polite, but he’s less stoic than Bill, and much more high-energy. Stan privately suspects that it’s because his mother keeps him so under wraps, and the second Eddie gets even a taste of freedom, he runs with it as far as he can. Where Bill is calm and only speaks to adults when he has to, Eddie is hyper, and his mouth runs a mile a minute, almost as much as Richie’s does.

Stan likes both of them in a way he can’t explain, the same way he feels about Richie. It almost feels like something is pushing them together, like opposite poles of a magnet, and they’re connecting as simple as that. Stan would call it friendship, but even at a young age he understands that it’s something deeper than

_(the turtle couldn’t save us)_

than that. It’s more. He doesn’t understand it, and he might not ever, but he knows it exists.

And yes, Mom and Dad think Bill and Eddie are fine, but they still don’t like Richie. They simply refuse to. Mom sighs long-sufferingly and says “I _guess_ ” when Stan asks if Richie can come over, and Dad’s face sets and he mutters something about bad parenting, even though he’s _met_ Richie’s parents, and had seemed to like _them_ alright.

Mr. and Mrs. Tozier like Stan, too. They smile nicely when he greets them politely, and always make sure he’s eating enough if he stays for dinner. Mr. Tozier plays catch with Stan and Richie in the yard, cheering every time Stan catches the ball, and Mrs. Tozier even tacks Stan’s school photo up on the fridge, right next to Richie’s. In short, they treat him like a second son, and Stan is grateful, but he doesn’t want them to disregard their _actual_ son in the process.

He hopes Richie isn’t mad at him.

You know, sometimes Stan thinks about Richie, and gets a little nervous. See, Stan’s a very closed-off person. He doesn’t particularly _mind_ social situations, but he isn’t a huge fan of being the center of attention. He generally likes to keep to himself, and he really only talks to his friends. Richie is the polar opposite. He loves to have people watching him, he loves to be loud, he loves to be the life of the party, and Stan doesn’t resent him for that (it’s part of who he _is_ ), but he can’t relate to it, either. It gets him worried that Richie won’t be able to relate to _him._

Whenever it’s Eddie or Bill’s birthday, Richie sings loudly in the middle of the cafeteria. Like, _really_ loudly. And everyone will turn to look at him, and who he’s singing to. Bill will go a little red, but he’ll laugh it off. Eddie will roll his eyes, but smile anyway.

The thing is, Stan’s birthday is in July, so there’s no possible way for Richie to sing to him at school. He’s always had a small party at home with his friends, but this time, for his eleventh, his parents are taking him out to dinner at Clayton’s, the really nice restaurant, and they’re letting him bring whoever he wants to. Of course, there’s only three people for Stan to bring at _all,_ so Eddie, Bill, and Richie come along for the ride.

Richie is surprisingly well-behaved for such a nice setting, and Stan can see the relief wash over his parents’s faces. But the whole night, Stan sits in his seat in anxious anticipation of what’s to come at the end of the meal, when the cake is brought out.

But when it happens, Richie stays silent, besides a few small cheers as Stan blows out the candles. Stan is surprised, and a little confused.

So after dinner, when they go back to Stan’s house for the sleepover portion of the party, Stan stops Richie on his way out of the bathroom.

“Why didn’t you sing happy birthday to me?” he asks.

Richie looks confused. “What?”

“You know,” Stan says. “When we were in the restaurant. You always sing to Eddie and Bill. Why didn’t you sing to me?”

Oh God, does Richie not _like_ him? Is _that_ why he hadn’t sung to Stan? Oh God. Oh God, he _hopes_ not.

“I thought that was obvious,” Richie says, shrugging. “You didn’t want anyone to sing it to you, so I didn’t.”

Stan blinks. “How...How did you know...?”

Richie grins. “Well, duh,” he says. “You’re my best friend, stupid.”

Stan feels a sudden wave of affection so strong it almost knocks him over. “... _Thanks,_ Rich.”

“Aw, come on, Stanny, don’t get all emotional on me.” But he’s smiling too.

So Richie hadn’t not sung because he _doesn’t_ like Stan. Richie hadn’t sung because he _does_ like Stan. He knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t be comfortable with it, and he didn’t overstep the boundaries Stan had set in place. Stan hadn’t even had to _tell_ him, but Richie had understood, anyway.

Stan doesn’t care if his parents don’t like Richie, because after tonight, they really will just have to suck it up and deal with it. Something tells him that if Mom and Dad had seen what Richie had done for Stan tonight, they wouldn’t be so keen to judge him.

Although, Stan can’t say that he isn’t judgmental himself. In fact, he thinks it’s probably his worst flaw. There’s been countless times where he’s met someone new, and had the first impression that they were annoying, or rude, or too loud for his tastes. He’ll have this set idea of them in his head, but once he actually gets to know them better, he’ll end up liking them, anyway, and proving himself wrong.

That’s exactly what he’d done with Richie, and Richie’s his best friend. He tries to use this as an example in his head for when he’s judging others, as a sort of cautionary tale.

But it never works, because here he is doing it again. Although this time, he thinks he may be right.

Ever since the fourth grade play, Bill has been absolutely over the moon for Beverly Marsh. He doesn’t even talk to her all that much, but he never seems to _shut up_ about her, even though it’s been years since the play even happened, where Bill and Beverly kissed at the end. He constantly tells them all that she’s the prettiest girl in school, and Stan can agree, she’s very beautiful, but...

But Stan’s heard lots of rumors. And so has Richie, and so has Eddie, and so, he knows, has Bill. Rumors that Beverly Marsh has a nice face, but underneath that she’s a _slut._ She’s _dirty._ She _sleeps around._ She lets boys do _things_ to her in the janitor’s closet, and Stan knows that rumors are often not true, but _everyone_ seems to believe this one. Besides, a rumor always has basis in fact, even if it’s just a little bit.

So, pardon Stan’s reasoning, but he isn’t all too sold on becoming friends with Beverly, and he knows that Richie and Eddie feel the same. Even when Richie starts to change his mind, all because she’d given him a cigarette once, Stan reminds him of the rumors.

“I don’t think someone who does all the things she’s done would be a very good person,” he says, and Eddie nods.

“Aw, c-come on, Stan. Give her a ch-chance,” Bill says.

“Why?” Stan asks. “She’s not the same person she was in the school play, Bill.”

Bill flushes bright red. Stan ignores him.

Maybe Stan’s an asshole. Maybe he says things to people that come off ruder than he means them to. But Stan is also heavily organized, and tuned into his life. He knows how things work. He knows exactly where everything is supposed to go, according to his brain, and if something is out of place, he knows it’s not right. He’s methodical in that sense, just like he’s methodical in the way he arranges his desk, or the way he carries out his nightly routine.

That’s weird, though, isn’t it? That’s not _normal._ Stan wants to be normal, knows he is, usually, at least in the sense that he’s ordinary. But being this hyper-focused on having everything a certain way, or freaking out the night before a test even though he knows all the material can’t be all too regular, can it?

Maybe he should -

Maybe...

He doesn’t know. Stan’s very confused. He isn’t usually confused. He’s not a big fan of the feeling.

Mike Hanlon is staring at him again.

Stan’s sitting on his usual bench at Bassey Park, binoculars to his face, searching the skies and tree line for anything new, and this is the second time Mike has ridden past here.

Stan’s never formally met him. He doesn’t think he’s ever even said a word to him. He knows who Mike is because _everyone_ knows the Hanlons, and their farm, and how badly they’re treated by this shitty town.

Stan’s never formally met him, and yet Mike is _staring_ at him. It’s not in a creepy way. Mike’s just doing his daily rounds through Derry, dropping meat off at the butcher’s, of course he’s going to bike past Bassey Park. But Mike is stopping in the park, bending down over the water fountain, and Stan can feel his eyes on him.

He looks up, and makes eye contact. Mike quickly drops his gaze and bikes away.

Stan isn’t creeped out. He isn’t uncomfortable. He’s _perplexed._ He doesn’t even know Mike. Did he do something wrong to him? Why else would he be looking at him like that?

Stan blushes a little, in spite of himself. No one’s ever _stared_ at him like that before, not that he knows of...

No. He must have done something to offend Mike, somehow. He should find out what it is, quickly, and apologize. Either that, or Mike can tell that something’s wrong with Stan just by looking at him. That’s an even worse thought.

Is Stan so obvious in that way? Is he really so clearly that odd?

He’s supposed to be _normal._

The whole encounter leaves a bad taste in his mouth, even though he doesn’t want it to.

He’d kind of liked it when they’d locked eyes, even just for that split second.

That makes him feel worse, somehow.

“So,” Eddie says, pulling his bike out of the rack. “Do you guys want to go to the movies tonight?”

“To see wh-what?” Bill asks.

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know, we’ll figure it out when we get there.”

“Hell yeah,” Richie says. “I think there’s an old horror movie double feature on tonight. A _creature-feature._ ”

“Only you like those c-corny old things, T-Trashmouth.”

“Aw, come on, Stan likes ‘em! Don’t you, Stan?”

Stan nods. “I do, actually. They’re cool. But I don’t think I’ll be able to hang tonight.”

Eddie frowns. “What? Why not?”

Stan shifts uncomfortably, readjusting his hold on his handlebars. “I’ve got a lot of homework,” he says. It isn’t a lie. He’d much rather hang out with his friends, but he should get his stuff done now, so he doesn’t have to do it over the weekend.

“Ok, sure,” Richie says. “But is it really going to take all night? It’s not even that _bad,_ it’s just a couple of math problems, and we have to finish up that rough draft for Mrs. Mitchell.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Stan replies. “Which is a lot, especially because I don’t understand the math, and I’ll have to ask my dad to help me with it.” Stan pulls a face. Dad’s good at math, but he isn’t good at teaching it. He gets frustrated too easily with Stan when he doesn’t understand.

“B-But don’t you want to s-s-see the movies?” Bill asks.

“I _do,_ ” Stan says, and he can feel the tension building in his shoulders, where it always collects when he’s under stress. “But I won’t have time. You guys can go on without me, and then I’ll be free all weekend.”

Eddie sighs. “Ok, Stan. Whatever you want to do.”

Stan feels bad letting his friends down, and he could really use a carefree night with them instead of worrying about school. But he knows that if he doesn’t understand his math work (his worst subject, even though he’s passing all his classes), he’ll fail the test, and then his grade will drop, and it will be on his permanent record for every college to see and judge him for. Worse than that, his _parents_ will be disappointed in him, and that’s the worst feeling in the world. Stan would much rather his parents be angry with him than disappointed.

When he gets home, he starts straight away on his rough draft, and manages to finish his essay within the hour, hand cramping as he finishes his conclusion. When Dad gets home, he sits with Stan at the dining room table and helps him with the problems, and despite the frustration coming from both parties (Dad because he can’t comprehend why Stan doesn’t understand it yet, Stan because Dad doesn’t realize that Stan didn’t inherit his math brain), Stan manages to get a grasp of it.

He puts away his work, feeling relieved. He checks his watch.

7:00. The others will all be at the theater by now, buying tickets for the 7:15 show.

Stan could run and catch up to them, make it just in time if he wants.

But then Mom’s calling him down for dinner, and he knows his parents don’t like it when he springs last-minute plans on them, so he decides to just go eat, even though regret pools deep in his stomach.

If Stan hadn’t blown things completely out of proportion (again), he could be at the movies, enjoying a fun Friday night with his friends. He could have finished his work with plenty of time to spare to get to the theater, or he could have just finished it up tomorrow. But he didn’t, and now he has to make small talk with his family over overcooked broccoli and bland meatloaf.

_Fuck,_ why is Stan _like_ this? Why does he have to make things so much worse than they actually are, so he gets stressed and thinks about nothing else until he’s finished? It’s ruining his fun, stopping him from spending time with his friends, and Stan is sure they must think he’s stupid for doing it.

He tries mentioning it to his parents a few times. How stressed he gets over the simplest things, how anxious he gets about public speaking or big changes in his life, but they just brush it off.

“Oh, _everyone_ gets anxious, Stanley,” Mom tells him. “I get anxious. Your father gets anxious. It’s just a thing humans do. It’s normal.”

Stan isn’t so sure that it _is._

“You don’t seem that way to me,” Dad tells him, eyes narrowing as if examining him closely. “Has someone been telling you that you seem like that to them?”

“No,” Stan says glumly. “Never mind.” And he leaves it at that.

They’re probably right, though. There’s nothing wrong with Stan. He’s just making mountains out of molehills. Again.

The weather gets colder, and it starts to snow. Stan heads down one frigid December morning to birdwatch at the park. Most birds fly south for the winter, and so it’s less interesting and less likely that Stan will find anything good, but he has nothing better to do, so he decides that he might as well.

Bassey Park is almost devoid of people, except for one man sitting on a bench. Stan has been watching this one crow ( _Corvus brachyrynchos_ ) hop around for about fifteen minutes, and he’s just thinking that he should probably start back home, when a familiar blue Corvette pulls up to the curb.

Bowers. They’ve probably come down here for a snowball fight or something. Maybe Stan can slip away before they notice him. He starts to inch away from his spot, keeping his head down and trying to stay calm.

“Hey, Stanley Urine!”

Shit.

_Just keep quiet, don’t look at them and you can get away._

“Hey! Jew-boy! I’m talking to you, motherfucker!”

Stan can only do so much as set his binoculars and bird encyclopedia down on the bench before Criss and Huggins throw him to the icy ground, aiming kicks to his stomach, to his ribs, to his kidneys, anywhere they can. The pain is awful. Stan squirms around on the ground like an inchworm, yelping every time one of their snowshoes makes contact, wondering what the _fuck_ that old man on the bench is doing right now, if he even _cares._

All Stan can hear is the laughing and jeering from Bowers and the rest of them, the taunts of _Christ-killer,_ and _fucking kike_. He tries to push himself up, but he feels woozy, and is soon pushed back down again.

Suddenly, the laughing stops. The kicking does, too, thank _fuck._ Stan hears a sickening crunch, then a lot of screaming and yelling. He manages to sit up this time, stomach lurching violently as he does.

Mike Hanlon is his knight in shining snow pants, and he’s wrestling with Victor Criss and Belch Huggins. There’s spots of red staining the patches of snow at Henry Bowers’s feet, more of the same spilling from between his fingers, and Stan forces himself to stand, because wouldn’t it be funny if Mike saved his ass and Stan couldn’t even help him out in return?

He stumbles to his feet just as Patrick Hockstetter starts to charge towards Mike, and Stan grabs the back of Mike’s collar and wrenches him out of the warpath. Hockstetter lands headfirst in a snowdrift, leaving both Mike and Stan in tears of laughter.

And then Henry’s dad shows up, angry as anything, and Mike and Stan are left alone.

Stan wipes the blood off of Mike’s face, because it’s the least he can do, and Mike lets him. He decides, even then, that he likes Mike. Sure, Mike had just saved his skin, but there’s something about him that’s just... _comforting._ Something that draws Stan in, makes him want to be around him more.

“Thanks for saving me back there,” Stan says. “I don’t know what I’d be doing if you hadn’t come along.”

“No,” Mike replies. “Thank _you._ I would’ve gotten plowed by Hockstetter if you hadn’t pulled me out of the way.”

Stan laughs then, and this laugh comes out softer than his usual one, though he has no idea why. “I guess that’s true. We saved each other.”

And for some reason, that makes his heart skip a beat. Stan feels a _connection_ to Mike, exactly like the connection he feels with Richie and Eddie and Bill. He wonders if Mike can feel it, too. So Stan finds himself asking to follow Mike while he goes to the butcher’s.

Mike agrees, a soft smile on his face.

Ok, what the _fuck_ is _wrong_ with Stan? He’s never really felt like this before, not ever...

“Sorry,” Mike says. “But you never told me your name.”

Stan is an _idiot._

“Oh,” he says, feeling downright foolish. “I didn’t? Shit, I’m sorry, I guess I’m still distracted that I - well, I forgot. I’m Stanley. Stanley Uris.”

Mike’s hand is warm in his own.

On the way down the street, Mike tells Stan about how he likes history. How it fascinates him, how he loves to learn the origins of things and where everything came from. Stan loves to watch him talk. His eyes get all wide, and he waves his hands a lot.

“What about you?” Mike asks. “I know you like birds. Tell me more about that.”

“Oh,” Stan says sheepishly, face burning. “Well, I got my first bird encyclopedia from my mom when I was six years old. But I didn’t get this one until I was ten. It’s really good. It’s got both photos and drawings of the birds, which can be really helpful in the field, and it’s got tons of cool facts about each one.”

“Cool,” Mike says, and he looks genuinely interested. “Why do you like birds so much?”

And Stan frowns, because nobody’s ever actually _asked_ him that question before. “Oh. Um. Well, I don’t really know. I guess I think they’re pretty? There’s lots of birds with really beautiful plumage. And I - I think it’s _brilliant_ how birds have mastered the ability of flight with wings that are pretty flimsy and easily broken. It’s like, on some cosmic scale, they’ve got it. They’ve figured out something that us humans haven’t gotten to yet, I think.”

Mike smiles. “Wow,” he says. And Stan smiles back.

“This is me,” Mike says, gesturing to the sign above the door of the butcher’s shop. “Hey, maybe I’ll see you around?”

Stan grins. “Hope so. See you around, Mikey.” He turns and starts to walk home.

_Mikey?_ Where had _Mikey_ come from? God, that’s embarrassing. Sounds like something a _baby_ would be named. Mike probably thinks Stan’s really weird, giving him a nickname, let alone a _baby_ nickname when they’ve only officially known each other for less than an hour.

Yet Stan can tell this isn’t true. He isn’t sure how, he isn’t sure _why,_ but he knows, deep down, that Mike doesn’t mind. That Mike might even _like_ the nickname.

And even if they don’t see each other around as much as Stan had hoped, that thought still leaves Stan breathless, walking home with a slight spring in his step and a dopey grin on his face.

The snow melts, the roads defrost, and the birds return as spring rolls around. Stan finds himself biking around town more and more with his friends, and bird-watching at the park, now that they’re back to warmer weather.

Sometimes, he goes to the park under the pretense of looking for birds, but really he’s looking for Mike. He sees him every now and then, and Stan can feel his heart pounding in his chest as he waves to him, a stupid smile spreading across his face, though he doesn’t understand why. When Mike waves back, and returns with a grin as warm as the weather, Stan feels all bubbly inside, in a way that makes him feel a little nauseous. He isn’t sure he likes that part of it, because then he feels like he’s going to throw up.

Despite all this, Stan and Mike don’t hang out with each other, never advance past the smiles and the waves. Usually, when Stan sees Mike, Stan is with his other friends, and he feels like Mike doesn’t want to intrude on their group, even though he knows that Richie and Eddie and Bill wouldn’t mind at all, would probably welcome Mike easily. Other times, when it’s just Stan sitting on a bench, binoculars in his lap, he feels like whatever’s keeping them from talking to each other isn’t going to do it for much longer. He doesn’t know how he can tell, but he

_(turtle the turtle the turtle couldn’t save us)_

thinks that Mike might be able to feel its presence, too.

Today, though, a misty early May day, Stan really _is_ going birdwatching. One of Dad’s friends had mentioned seeing a male cardinal ( _Fringillidae Richmondena_ ) over by the old Standpipe, and as cardinal’s are not exactly common this far north of Massachusetts, Stan of course wants to see if he can get a glimpse before it leaves for sunnier skies. So he heads over to Memorial Park one drizzly afternoon to try and spot it, bundled up in his yellow slicker and rain boots, trudging through muddy earth under a blanket of clouds and a haze of lightly-falling rain.

Stan tries not to think about the fact that Georgie Denbrough went missing on a day much like this one, wearing a similar yellow raincoat. The idea of the missing kids scares Stan, a lot. Georgie, of course, the most. But then there was Veronica Grogan, who was Stan’s lab partner once, and Cheryl Lamonica, who still holds the high score on Street Fighter at the arcade. Richie has been agonizing over whether or not it would be ok to beat her for the past week or so, ever since the news of her disappearance broke. Stan doesn’t want to disappear, too.

_Stop it,_ he tells himself. _You’re being a baby. And it was_ storming _the day Georgie went missing. It’s only drizzling today. Calm down._

Bill likes to _say_ Georgie’s missing, and out of respect for his grieving, and out of simply being good friends, the others play along. But Stan knows what Georgie really is, and he doesn’t want to think about it.

Stan reaches the crest of the hill by Memorial Park, looming above it like some sort of giant, like Og in the Torah. The park is completely empty, reflecting the mood of the grey day, and Stan knows he only has about an hour until he starts to lose light. He stumbles his way down the opposite slope of the hill, giving the Standpipe a wide berth when he reaches it.

He’s heard stories, of kids who have drowned in that Standpipe. They’re not even rumors. The Standpipe is closed, so Stan knows those stories to be true, because why else would the Standpipe shut down? These kids, kids _Stanley’s age_ , no less, had gone in there one night on a dare, and had slipped into the water on accident. By the time the caretaker had unlocked the door the next morning, their bodies were floating like ducks. Stan knows that the Standpipe is locked tight, and that there’s no way he can get in,

_(or anything can get out)_

but the sight of its great white cylinder still makes him uneasy. Keeping his distance makes him feel a little safer.

Stan finds his usual bench, fifteen feet away from the park’s birdbath, where he can get a perfect and unobstructed view of any birds that might like to make a pit stop there. The pedestal in front of the birdbath’s inscription used to mystify him, since the only Latin Stanley understands are the genus classification nomenclatures in his bird encyclopedia, but when he’d asked his dad, his dad had told him:

“ _Apparebat eidolon senex. ‘_ A phantom appeared in the form of an old man.’ Pliny said that, though I’m not sure if it was the Younger or the Elder.”

Stan doesn’t understand the quote, and won’t pretend to.

So far, the only activity Stan can see are a couple of house sparrows ( _Passe domesticus_ ) bathing themselves in the water, ruffling their feathers across their tiny bodies. He watches them for a while, but he sees sparrows all the time. He’s here to see this cardinal, and it’s starting to get dark.

After another fifteen minutes with no sign of the cardinal, Stan reluctantly stands to leave. If he had gotten here earlier, he might already have seen it, and he curses the fact that he hadn’t come over here earlier in the day instead of, once again, doing his homework.

He’s pulling the hood of his slicker up over his head when a loud _BOOM!_ shocks the sparrows into flight, seeming to shake the ground with its power.

Stan wheels around, the sound still reverberating through the air, though maybe, it’s just in his head.

The iron door to the Standpipe is standing wide open. It had not been open when Stan had come down here. Stan has never seen it open, not ever. In fact, he thinks it probably hasn’t been open in years, not since the Standpipe closed.

Yet here it is, the door pushed back against the wall, the insides full of a deep, cavernous blackness. Stan doesn’t want to go that blackness. What Stan _wants_ is to go home. He shuts his eyes tight and begins to walk in the other direction, away from Memorial Park, holding the lobe of his ear tightly between his thumb and index finger, as he usually does when he’s nervous or afraid.

But when he opens his eyes again, he’s standing in the doorway, staring the inky blackness right in its horrifying face.

Stan sucks in a little sharp intake of breath. He can’t see anything inside, no matter how far he leans in, no matter how much he squints his eyes. The light outside is diminishing rapidly, but it should still be shining a little in here. Yet there is no light shining in the Standpipe, none at all.

From up in the Standpipe’s watery depths, where, Stan assumes, a flight of stairs must lead to the old observation deck, a tinny sequence of notes begins to play. It sounds like circus music, some quick and jovial tune played on a calliope. “Camptown Races,” it sounds like. Stan sometimes sings that song over the campfire with his Boy Scout troop. Then, it is fun, a harmless little ditty that the boys can enjoy singing along to while roasting marshmallows over the fire, but now it is different. Now, it is terrifyingly, _abundantly_ malicious, even if it doesn’t sound that way.

Stan should leave. Every fiber of his body is screaming at him to. He really should. It’s getting dark. Dinner will be ready soon.

He steps into the Standpipe. One step. Another. One more. Until he’s right at the bottom of the stairs, the doorway left forgotten behind him, resting his hand on the cold metal of the railing.

Yes, the music frightens him. But it also draws him in, lures him like a lamb to the slaughter. And Stan can smell fair food. Funnel cakes, and popcorn, and cotton candy, and french fries with mustard. His mouth waters.

Then, from the top of the stairs, right at the entrance to the deck, a foot comes down onto the landing with a sickening _squish._

At least, Stan _thinks_ it’s a foot. He still can’t see. But then there’s another _squish_ , and another, and they definitely sound like footsteps, don’t they? Footsteps made by someone with shoes made of rubber, don’t they? The footsteps keep coming, crossing the landing, beginning to descend the staircase. It definitely sounds like more than one... _person,_ or whatever this is. And Stan can see, with sudden shocking and awful clarity, that the light, which had previously not shone inside the Standpipe at all, is illuminating the far wall, and though Stan still can’t see ahead of him, he can see shadows bobbing down the steps. Humanoid shadows.

Stan needs to move. Because, if he doesn’t move, he will most certainly die.

_Camptown ladies sing this song, doodah doodah..._

A face looms out of the darkness, a terrible, grinning face with pale, pale skin, smooth and unblemished and white as cream. It’s puffed up, bloated, _water-logged,_ and the face has little bits of hair clinging to its decaying scalp. In the light, it looks blue. The thing in front of Stan looks... _pulpy._ Two more soggy faces appear on either side of the first, grinning and pale and blue just the same.

_These are the dead kids,_ Stan realizes, fumbling for his earlobe again. _The kids who drowned in the Standpipe. And they’re going to drown me too._

_Guess I’ll have to miss dinner._

Stan runs, runs as fast as his legs will carry him. The squishy footsteps pick up the pace, clambering down the rest of the stairs, and Stan makes it to the doorway, the rectangle of light that is his only way out of here, the promise of safety, of escape, and as he is just about to cross the iron threshold, the great metal door slams right in his face.

_No. No no no no no no no no no._

He pushes against the door as hard as he can, but to no avail. He turns, and frantically begins to throw his shoulder into it, ignoring the dull pains the force sends through his arm, because he’s got to get out, he’s got to get _out._

But the door is refusing to budge.

Stan wheels around, pressing his back flat against the door, heart in his throat. He can hear the corpses getting closer, forever-pruny fingertips dripping water onto the floor. _Plink. Plink. Plink._

_Come with us, Stanley,_ he hears the voices say, choked with water, bubbly in their tone. _We’re the dead kids. We sank...but now we float...and you’ll float, too._

Stan feels water pooling around his sneakers. He again tries to throw his weight against the door, but to no avail. And something in his pocket is digging into his hipbone over and over again, jabbing him uncomfortably in the stomach repeatedly.

It’s his bird book, he realizes. He pulls it out and stares at it, at the little sketches of birds on the cover.

“Robins,” he mumbles to himself. It’s more like a croak, really.

He thrusts his book out in front of him like a shield. “ _Robins!_ ” he screams, one hand on his book, the other on his ear. “ _Robins! Gray egrets! Loons! Scarlet tanagers! Grackles! Hammerhead woodpeckers! Redheaded woodpeckers! Chickadees! Wrens! Pelic - “_

The door bursts open behind him, and Stan, still clutching the book as tightly as he can, falls backwards, sprawling on the wet grass. He kicks out in front of him, using his legs to maneuver himself backwards, away from the door, the stupid _fucking door -_

“Sparrows,” he still mutters under his breath. “Bluejays. Ravens. Albatrosses. Fucking, fucking _cardinals -_ “

He stops.

A different face, a new face, peers out of the darkness at him. It is the white and unmistakable face of a circus clown.

IT grins down at him, gloved hands bracing itself on either side of the door, saliva running from IT’s mouth, down IT’s chin, dripping onto the ground.

“Cardinals,” IT says, still grinning. “Fucking _cardinals._ ”

One of IT’s hands reaches up and into IT’s mane of orange hair, and tugs on IT’s ear mockingly.

And then IT does a very peculiar thing. IT releases IT’s ear, holds out IT’s arm, and with IT’s fingers, makes a slashing motion across IT’s wrists, as if drawing a streak of ink across IT’s arm with a pen. It’s a simple and meaningless pantomime, but for some reason it chills Stan to the very bone.

Then IT giggles, and the door slams shut.

Stan allows himself exactly three seconds to stare at where IT had been, to try and catch his breath.

And then he pulls himself to his feet and runs all the way home.

_What,_ Stan thinks as he shuts the light off at night, pulling the covers up to his chest. _Was that all about? That couldn’t have really happened. It couldn’t’ve._

_I was dreaming. Had to be. Must’ve fallen asleep at the bench waiting for the cardinal and had a nightmare._

_Because something like that isn’t possible. Dead kids coming back to life, carnival food and “Camptown Races,” a clown with a white face and orange hair...those things don’t just_ happen. _Logic doesn’t_ allow _them to happen. They’re not real. They can’t be real, because that would go against everything that...well,_ everything.

_The kids, the clown, the music - all not real._

Yes. Alright. Stan can believe that. Stan can convince himself of that.

But...

_The way the clown had touched IT’s wrist..._

That seems more real than anything else. Stan still doesn’t know what it means.

Stan doesn’t know what it means, but he shivers just the same.

_Apparebat eidolon senex._

Stan, heart racing, switches on the light.

It had all been a dream, of course. A nightmare

_(though he can’t remember his nightmares ever being so vivid)_

of epic proportions. A figment of Stan’s imagination. Nothing to be afraid of, not at all, at least, not in the daylight. In the daylight, pretending is simple, and it’s easy to ignore it all. At night, you’re on your own. At night, the bad things come.

But it had been a dream, and nothing more.

Yes, it _had_ been a dream, until the others ruin Stan’s perfect illusion. They all saw things, too, and Stan doesn’t want to hear about them. He doesn’t want to _know_ what his friends have seen. They don’t seem to understand this about him.

_They can acknowledge it, they can believe that all this shit is real, but I_ can’t, _I really, really can’t. They’re not me. They don’t get it, but if I start_ believing _that it’s real, then it_ will _be real, even if it makes no logical sense to be that way, and I think it’ll kill me. I think I’ll die because of this, right here, because there is no clown, there are no dead kids, there are no fucking cardinals and there is no wrist-cutting, there isn’t. Bill, Eddie, Bev, Richie, Ben,_ Mike, _they don’t_ understand _that, they don’t understand how important it is for this to be a dream. To me. It isn’t real. None of it._

Stan does his best to try and voice all of this. He knows that if he doesn’t, they’ll never understand. But Richie just says:

“Stanny, stop kidding yourself. We’re all afraid of something. And we’re seeing shit, all of us. It’s real.”

Mike touches Stan’s leg then, and Stan feels his throat bob as he tries not to cry

This...all of this...it’s too _much._ Stan can’t do this. He can’t deal with missing kids, and clowns, and bullies, and fear, and Mike’s hand on his _fucking_ leg, and for what reason? Because he’s delicate. Because Stan is the weakest out of all of them, even with the addition of three new members. Always has been, always will be, and nothing will ever change that because Stan is never _going_ to change. He’ll be stuck like this forever, in this same loop of being too cautious and overbearing, of blocking out the things that scare him, of being a weakling, and a shrimp, and a coward, and a _loser._ He’ll die a loser, he knows he will.

Well, maybe not a loser, but a Loser. That’s what Stan is now, isn’t it? That’s what he’s always been, really. That’s what they all are.

Fuck. He doesn’t know what to _do._

And it’s not only the fact that monsters are real that’s fucking him up, it’s also the fact that once again, Stan has thought too soon and judged a book by its cover. He had been so sure this time, too. But he’s always sure, it seems, until he’s proven wrong.

Beverly Marsh is now his friend. If you had told Stan a year ago that he’d be friends with Beverly Marsh today, he would’ve looked at you like you were crazy. In fact, he thinks he _might_ be going a little crazy, for more than one reason. At first, he’s rude to Beverly. He doesn’t even mean to be, but maybe he just does it subconsciously. He snaps at her, and scowls, and he knows it isn’t nice, but Stan doesn’t like being wrong.

He _had_ been wrong about her, though, and that’s the problem. She’s not mean. She’s not careless. She’s not a _slut._ She’s...well, she’s a little perfect, in Stan’s opinion, and that infuriates him just a little bit. She’s... _cool._ Too cool to be hanging out with the rest of them, but she does anyway, and Stan can’t understand _why._

Though maybe it has something to do with those odd feelings he’s been having. How, now that they’re all here, as seven, they’re whole. They can’t get better than this, and they _won’t_ get better than this. Seven may seem like a lot, but for the Losers Club, it _works._ Eight would be too many. Six wouldn’t be enough. Seven, however, is perfect for them. Beverly fits in with them because she’s supposed to. Maybe she always has been.

It’s this realization that has Stan feeling guilty for the way he’s been treating her all this time, and he decides to set out and make things right. He asks to walk her home one evening, talks with her about things, trying to fix the damage he’s done, notices her faded, bruised, yellow eye and her long sleeves, even in the summer, and knows that he can’t judge people too soon, because he doesn’t know what they’ve gone through. And he tells her so.

He lets all this spill out, and he looks at her for approval. She just stares at him.

“Oh. Ok. Thanks, Stanley.” He can tell she means it.

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say. “For believing all those... _things_ people say about you. I shouldn’t have. They were awful, and...and I know they’re not true. I shouldn’t have believed them, I think you should know that. I regret it. And you’re really cool, even if you don’t think so. I just wanted you to know that,” he finishes lamely.

Bev smiles, and it’s too real, too sweet. It’s so much more than Stan deserves for the way he’s treated her.

“Thank you. I’m sorry, too. For being rude.”

“Don’t be,” he tells her. “I’m not worth it.”

  
  
He isn’t. Why should he deserve her apology, when she shouldn’t be giving it in the first place? Why does Stan get apologized to when _he_ is the one making things wrong, when _he_ is the one being a terrible person? A terrible friend?

He just hopes he isn’t being a terrible friend now.

They reach Bev’s apartment complex, awash in the clear and pale moonlight, and Stan sees Bev’s face change. It goes all closed off, and it wipes itself clean of any traces of positive emotion. Stan doesn’t know everything that Bev has to deal with at home, but he feels this urge to _do_ something about it, to make it better, to march right in there and yell at her father to cut it _out,_ she’s never done anything wrong, not to you, not to anyone.

He can’t do those things, so instead, he offers to smoke with her.

“You want a _cigarette?_ ” she asks. Stan doesn’t usually smoke, but he nods. Anything to keep her from going in there.

“Sure. Why not?”

Bev passes a Winston over, and Stan feels a tad bit of guilt in the way he feels proud when he only coughs once on the first inhale, and after that they stand in the glow of the streetlamp and the moon, and finish off their cigarettes together, not talking at all. The words they want to say float between them, and they understand anyway. That night, Stan gains a new best friend.

Once Stan takes both his and Bev’s cigs and deposits them carefully in the trash bin, he says:

“I’m having my bar mitzvah, in a couple of weeks. Richie and Eddie and Bill are invited, and I’m going to ask Mike and Ben to come, too. Do you want to come?” He kicks at the gravel under his shoe sheepishly. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Bev’s too cool. She’s not going to want to go to some lameass bar mitzvah, right?

“Sure,” she says, smiling. “Sounds fun. I’ve never been to a bar mitzvah before.”

Stan grins back, unable to help himself. “Ok. I’ll see you tomorrow, Bev.”

“See you tomorrow, Stanley.”

And he leaves feeling a little bit better about everything.

Making friends with Beverly Marsh is just one thing in a summer full of things for Stan. Making friends with Ben Hanscom is another, and Stan admires his thoughtfulness, and his quiet understanding, and the clubhouse he builds. It’s really cool. Like, _really_ cool. It’s nothing particularly _special,_ at least, not to an outsider, but to the Losers, it’s a home. It’s their own place for them to exist together, and it’s sure as hell special to them.

It’s underground, though, and their first day in there, Stan feels a little uneasy about that part. All the dirt and dust and grime, settling everywhere, getting all over everything and everyone. Not to mention the prospect of _bugs..._ and maybe Stan can’t do much about the dirt (besides obsessively wipe down anything he decides to touch or sit on), but he _can_ remedy the bug problem.

Stan comes back the next day with a cookie tin stolen from his pantry, and seven brightly-patterned shower caps from Keene’s Drug. It costs him three dollars in total.

“The fuck is this?” Richie asks when Stan offers him one.

Stan smiles at him, adjusting his own shower cap on top of his curls. “So you don’t get spiders in your hair while you’re down here.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “We’re not afraid of fucking spiders, Stanley.”

And maybe that’s true, but everyone else is wearing one. Richie can get spiders in his hair for all Stan cares. He’s probably already got lice, anyway. What’s the harm in a couple of more bugs?

“Call an exterminator on his fucking haircut,” he mumbles, as he walks away from Richie and the hammock, and Mike laughs and Stan forgets himself.

That’s another thing about this summer. He’s friends with Mike. Being around him makes Stan feel like he did that day in the winter, except now it’s all the time. When Stan is around Mike, he feels jumpy, and restless, and he laughs too loud at the things that Mike says, and he gets all hot and flustered when Mike leans in close, and he doesn’t really understand why it’s happening to him, and he can’t tell if he likes it or not.

_I don’t,_ Stan thinks, watching Mike pedal back home after a long day at the quarry. _I don’t like it._

_I do,_ Stan thinks, as Mike slings a gentle arm around Stan’s shoulders, pressing the skin of his inner wrist against the bare slope of Stan’s shoulder, peeking out from under his sleeve, and Stan’s stomach swoops at the touch. _I do. I really, really do._

He thinks that’s a little more truthful, albeit a little more confusing.

Things are confusing a lot. And Stan can’t help but ask,

“Do you think we’ll still be friends? When we’re older?”

The others stare at him, confused at the sudden change in mood.

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Bill asks.

“I mean,” Stan says, grimacing uncomfortably. “Do any of your parents still hang out with their friends that they knew back then? Back when they were our age? Things could change. We might be different.”

He’s dug himself into a hole. Why did he _ask_ this stupid question?

He knows why. Because Stanley Uris is a pessimist, and he’s an anxious kid, and he thinks ahead to things that he never wants to think about.

“We’ll always be f-friends,” Bill says. “I don’t think that just g-goes away because w-we get older.”

  
“Yeah, Stan,” Bev says, smiling in the way she does when she wants to deflect something, Stan knows. “You don’t have to be so sad.”

She’s right. He shouldn’t think about it. He shouldn’t be sad.

Everything is just so _confusing._

Being a teenager is difficult. Stan’s got to study all his Hebrew for his bar mitzvah, and make sure he knows all the pronunciations for when he’s reading from the Torah, because he can’t bear to hear the disappointed tones in his father’s voice, the _How’s it going to look? The rabbi’s son can’t even finish his own Torah reading,_ and the _Take the book to my office. Clearly, you aren’t studying, Stanley._ It’s hard. Stan hates it.

There’s also the _hormones,_ God, the _hormones._ Stan gets really angry at things for no reason, and sometimes he feels sad, but that’s not what gets him the most. It’s how hormonally charged his _friends_ are, in the ways that they’re all, like, _in love_ with each other.

Stan likes to fancy himself an observant person, alright? He can recognize feelings for what they are. He can tell how deep they run, just by watching a person’s actions. And his friends are certainly no exception.

Bev’s managed to rope herself into a fucking _love triangle,_ whether she knows it or not, and Stan thinks she might. Obviously, Bill’s been head over heels for her ever since the stupid fourth grade play, but _Ben_ is, too, and Stan can tell that Bev’s feeling conflicted, even if she doesn’t tell him so. It’s all in the way she acts, in the way she looks at the two of them. To a less observant person, it might not be as clear, but Stan can tell.

Richie is a whole other story, and a more depressing one. Stan’s known that Richie’s had a crush on Eddie for probably about six or seven years by now. He isn’t obvious about it, but Stan is Richie’s best friend. He can figure these things out, because he knows him so well. He doesn’t know if Richie’s gay, or whatever, but he knows he likes Eddie. It’s there in how he teases him, how he pinches his cheeks and calls him names, and Stan doesn’t miss the way Eddie blushes when Richie does it, either.

But with them, it’s different. This isn’t a girl dealing with her feelings for two different boys. This is a boy having feelings for another _boy._ This is small town Derry, Maine in 1989. This is the slurs and threats on the Canal Bridge, this is the endless taunts and jeers from Bowers, this is the way things _go_ in Derry, and it‘s only natural for Richie and Eddie to be afraid, because who wouldn’t be? Stan’s afraid of the graffiti, and the bashing, and the teasing from Bowers. Anyone would be.

Sometimes, Stan thinks it’s just because Derry is a small town. Other times, he _knows_ it’s because Derry is Derry.

Mike doesn’t seem to have a crush on anyone, at least, not that Stan knows. If he does, she isn’t a Loser. Stan feels a little happy when he deduces this. It’s probably because he and Mike are such good friends. It’s to do with the instant connection they’d formed upon meeting, Stan knows. Sometimes, he imagines Mike with a girlfriend, and feels a surge of jealousy and anger, but knows it’s because if Mike were dating someone, Stan would be the ultimate seventh wheel, and that would be pretty pathetic, being the only one without a date.

It definitely has nothing to do with the way Mike makes Stan feel.

Human emotion is complicated. Fear, the most so.

And Stan’s been having fun this summer, of course he has. He’s made new friends, and they’re all going to come to his bar mitzvah, and they’ll have a good time, because Stan cares about them, and they care about him in return.

But underneath all of that, the fear runs deep, spouting terror like blood from a gaping wound. 

Stan does his best to ignore it, but he fears that now that he knows about it, he may never escape it.

Not until he dies.

And he almost does die, when they go into Neibolt. Eddie’s arm breaks, and Ben’s stomach gets cut again, and there’s a lot of screaming and yelling and crying, and it’s honestly terrible. Stan hadn’t wanted to go in there, hadn’t wanted to go after IT at all, hadn’t wanted to even _believe_ in IT, and now that he’s been close to the things that have been haunting him all summer, he knows he’ll never be able to do it again. If Bill asks Stan to go back into the house, Stan will have to say no. Because he can’t go back in there. He _can’t._

As Stan watches Bill and Richie yell at each other, he wonders if they’ll ever _have_ to go in again. Then, Bill punches Richie and Stan stops wondering. He and Mike pull Richie to his feet, preventing him from hitting Bill back, and Stan knows that something unforgivable has just transpired within the Losers Club.

“You’re all just a bunch of fucking _losers!_ ” Richie’s screaming. “Just a bunch of _losers,_ fucking all of you!” He wrenches free, grabs his bike, and leaves.

Stan won’t deny that the words cut him deep, deeper than he’d like to admit. Richie is his best friend, he doesn’t mean any of that...but what if he does? What if, because he’s mad at Bill, he’s mad at all of them? What if he doesn’t want to be Stan’s friend anymore, what if he really thinks that Stan is a...

A _loser._

“We know where IT lives,” Bill is saying. “We’ll be better p-p-prepared next time - “

“ _No!_ ” Stan yells. His voice cracks pathetically. “No ‘next time,’ Bill! I can’t do that! I can’t - I _can’t_ \- I - I - “ He takes a deep breath and goes for his bike.

“Stan,” he hears Mike say, but for once, Stan ignores him.

When he gets home, he curls up into a little ball on top of his bedcovers and cries. It’s more like gasping, really, but there’s a lot of snot, and Stan can’t control his breathing, can hardly breathe at all (he wonders if this is how Eddie feels when he has an asthma attack), and his stomach lurches from side to side sickeningly. Through it all, Stan can only think that this is the end. The Losers are over. Stan’s going to be alone, all alone, with no one else there for him...

Stan presses his nails into his palms. Tomorrow is his bar mitzvah. Tomorrow is his bar mitzvah, and now no one will come to it, because Stan has no friends anymore.

He thinks about this, and about Neibolt, and about IT, and about how he won’t be friends with the Losers forever, and about how this is it, the end of their friendship, and feels like the darkness is closing in, too close, too close, too close for comfort. He will choke on it. It will open his mouth and fill his throat and he will choke on it, or maybe it’ll just tighten around his wrists, giggling darkly and murmuring about cardinals.

This is the worst Stan has ever felt in his life. He’s equal parts terrified and sad and distraught.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must, because his alarm wakes him up and he has to get ready for the Big Day, as Mom calls it. The day where he becomes a man.

Stan isn’t feeling very big.

The car ride to the synagogue is silent, but Stan can see his mother is already shedding happy tears, though his father looks stoic as usual. Maybe a little apprehensive. Stan can respect that.

Once inside, Stan puts on his tallit and tefillin, goes over his words in his head. But he can hardly think, not about that. All he can think about is that his friends won’t be out there, and that his fears of losing them have come true.

  
  
He thinks that’s what he’s always been most afraid of, even more than dead kids or clowns.

Dead kids and clowns. Why does Stan have to live in such a fucked up part of the country? No one believes you here, and there are bad things, and when you try to tell the adults about the bad things, they don’t understand you. You’re just a kid, why should they? But being a kid is different than being an adult. Stan knows this, even now. When you’re an adult, you tend to turn a blind eye. You don’t see anything that really matters.

“Stanley,” his father’s voice comes. “It’s time.”

Stan tries his best to quash the dull feelings of anxiety deep in his stomach and follows his dad outside.

There are a lot of people in the audience. Normally, this would scare Stanley, make him not want to do his speech. Right now, he doesn’t even care. He feels as though he is moving through water.

Dad says his piece about how hard Stan’s worked, about the man he’s become, as if he hadn’t yelled at Stanley just the other night for being out with his friends instead of studying his Hebrew. There’s one good thing. Dad won’t have to worry about Stan being out with friends anymore, because he hasn’t got any to go out with.

Well, he's got maybe one.

Richie’s sitting in the audience with his mother, wearing a kippah, the only person Stan actually cares about who had bothered to show up, and while it hurts that none of the other Losers came, it’s good that Richie is here. Amazing, even. Stan had expected him to be the _least_ likely to attend, because of what he’d said and done yesterday.

Maybe Stan feels a little bit better, now.

Dad calls Stan forward to do his Torah reading, which goes smoothly, but the speech is where he hits his snag.

“Reflecting on the meaning of what I just read, the word ‘mishnah’ comes up a lot, which means to change, to transform.” Stan swallows dryly.

“Which makes sense, I guess, because today I am supposed to become a man.”

He pauses. Thinks about it.

And changes his mind. _Mishnah._

“It’s funny though,” he continues, trying to find a place to look, to anchor his gaze. He settles on Richie. “Everyone, I think, has some memories they’re prouder of than others, right? And maybe that’s why change is so scary.”

Stan feels powerful, all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the clown. Maybe it’s Richie in the audience. Maybe it’s what he’s saying. Maybe it’s the simple act of _being a kid._

“Because the things we wish we could leave behind, the whispers we wish we could silence. The nightmares we most want to wake up from. The memories we wish we could change. The secrets we feel like we have to keep, are the hardest to walk away from.”

There’s a lump in his throat, but he ignores it.

“The good stuff?” Stan says. “The pictures in our mind that fade the fastest? Those pieces of _you_ it feels the easiest to lose? Maybe, I don’t want to forget. Maybe that’s what today is all about. Forgetting, right?”

“Uh, thank you,” Dad says. “Thank you, Stanley.” He moves to take the microphone, but Stan backs away, stepping off the podium.

“Today,” he says, almost frantically, and his heart is going to beat out of his chest. “I’m supposed to become a man. But I don’t _feel_ any different.”

The mic stops short. He’s out of cord. He drops it, faces the crowd.

  
  
“Look, I know I’m a loser.” He isn’t sure if he’s talking to his parents, to Richie, to Derry, to IT, but he knows he’s talking to _someone._ “And no matter what, I always _fucking_ will be.”

Riding the adrenaline rush, ignoring the shocked gasps and scandalized whispers, Stan walks out of the room.

He goes out and sits on the synagogue steps, breathing hard. He can’t believe what he’s just done. He’s going to be in so much fucking trouble. Mom is going to be hurt and Dad is going to be _furious_ and Stan is going to be in so much fucking trouble.

He kind of likes the idea.

No one comes to get him. Stan would like to believe it’s because they understand he needs space, but more likely, it’s because they don’t know what they would say if they were here. Nobody would know what to say. Nobody, except -

“Stan.” Richie sits next to him.

“Hi.”

“That,” Richie says quietly, huge eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses. “That was fucking awesome.”

Stan cracks a grin, in spite of himself. “Yeah?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” Richie says, punching Stan playfully on the shoulder. Stan laughs, and he knows they’re ok. They’ll be alright, even if no one else will be.

“I meant what I said,” Stan says. “I am a loser.”

“You’re not,” Richie begins, but Stan shakes his head. 

“It’s ok. I know I am. And I think there are worse things to be than a Loser.”

“Yeah,” Richie mutters. “Yeah, you’re right.”

A beat. Then,

“Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday,” Richie says, tapping his foot restlessly against the concrete steps. “I don’t know what came over me. I think...I think...I don’t know. I was just angry.”

“We all get angry sometimes,” Stan says quietly. “It’s ok, Richie.”

“Stan,” Richie says. “You really are the man, you know that?”

“Yeah. I know.”

Richie hugs him, and Stan doesn’t even care if his parents kill him after this. Richie is still his friend, and that’s all that counts.

“I should probably go,” he says after a minute. “My dad’s going to freak.”

  
“He shouldn’t,” Richie mumbles. “That was _badass._ ”

Stan laughs lightly, and he means it.

His parents _are_ mad. Angrier than Stan has ever seen them. 

“What made you think that was ok?” Dad explodes as soon as they walk in the door. “You - Stanley, that was _embarrassing,_ that was _disruptive,_ that was _vulgar,_ and that was very unlike you! I’m surprised at you, actually! You’re not usually like this. I’m - I mean, I can’t _believe_ you thought doing that was alright, going up there in front of everyone on the most important day of your childhood and not only straying from your original speech, but _cursing_ in a _synagogue_ at your _bar mitzvah!_ Do you have _anything_ you’d like to say for yourself? Because I’d like to hear it!”

Stan just looks at him. “I don’t regret it. I meant every word I said.”

“Really?” Mom bursts. “ _Really_ , Stanley? That all sounded like a load of _crap._ Who told you to say all that? Was it a dare? Was it Richie? Did he tell you that it would be _cool_ if you did it?”

“No, Mom,” Stan says calmly. “Richie had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even know I was going to do it, not until I was up there. Like I said, I don’t regret it. I’d do it all again, if I had the chance.”

“Go to your room,” Dad fumes, and then yells, “ _Go to your room!”_

Stan does without putting up a fight. He sits on his bed and looks at his friends’s school photos in the yearbook, because he misses them more than anything else.

There’s a tap on his window, and Stan’s heart leaps into his throat. What if it’s IT, what if it’s IT, come to do him in, once and for all, because IT knows Stan’s a Loser, and that he always fucking will be?

It’s Mike, and Stan feels dizzy. He pushes his window open.

“Hi,” he whispers. “I can’t let you in, my parents will hear you.”

“Hi,” Mike says back, legs straddling his bike, skin glinting in the glow of the twilight. “That’s ok. I heard about what happened. Richie told me.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, and he really looks like he means it. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come. And I’m sorry that you got in trouble.”

“It’s alright. I’m not mad,” he says, and is surprised to find that he means it. He doesn’t think he could stay mad at any of them for too long.

“What you did was really brave,” Mike says. “Like, _really_ brave.”

Stan feels hot, even in the fading light. He hopes Mike can’t see. “Thanks, Mikey.”

“I like it when you call me Mikey,” Mike says softly. Stan feels weak in the knees. “I like _you,_ Stan. You’re a really good person. I think you might be the best of us.”

“No,” Stan replies, once he remembers how to speak. “I’m not. You are. You’re the best of us.”

“How can I be, if I didn’t come to your bar mitzvah?” Mike asks guiltily.

“That doesn’t matter,” Stan tells him quickly. “I don’t care. It was dumb, anyway. You’re the best of us because you _care,_ Mike. You love other people.”

Mike shakes his head. “But you’re better,” he says. “You notice things that other people don’t. And you understand us better than we understand ourselves, sometimes. That’s amazing. _You’re_ amazing.”

Stan feels like crying. “No, you are.”

“Well,” Mike says, smiling. “If we can’t agree, we’ll compromise.”

“Who’s the best of us, then?”

“Ben?”

Stan chuckles. “I think you’re right.”

Mike smiles again. “I should probably head home. I just had to see you. So I could apologize. And also,” he frowns slightly. “I think I missed you.”

Stan’s heart leaps. “I missed you, too.”

Mike grins softly. “Bye, Stan.”

“Bye, Mikey.”

And he’s gone.

Stan stares out the window for a while after that, until it’s completely dark out. He shuts the window and flops onto his back on his bed, stares at the ceiling fan and watches it make its lazy trips round and round in the air.

He doesn’t care about what his parents think anymore. He doesn’t care about the house on Neibolt Street. All he can think about is the conversation he’s just had, playing it over and over again in his mind. He feels light. Fluttery. _Drunk._

“Shit,” Stan whispers to himself, as he realizes that he might be in love with Mike Hanlon, just a little bit.

All this to say, even though Stan is grounded and afraid, he still goes back to Neibolt. If it had been Bill who had asked him to, to find Georgie, to kill IT, Stan wouldn’t have done it. No matter how much he idolizes Bill, he wouldn’t have gone.

But he goes anyway, because Beverly has been captured, and if they don’t save her, who will? He sneaks out of the house as soon as he hangs up the phone, careful to make as little sound as possible, methodically scaling his way down the wall and going to grab his bike. Normally, he might feel guilty about disobeying his parents, and anxious about what would happen if he got caught. At this point, Stan doesn’t exactly give a shit. Bev’s in trouble, and if something happens to her because Stan followed the rules, he would never forgive himself.

“Normally.” It’s really about time for Stan to accept the fact that _nothing_ about him is normal, not any more.

But maybe he’d never been very normal in the first place.

When he’s going into the house again, it’s not normal. When he’s climbing down the well, it’s not normal. When he’s splashing through disgusting graywater and _God_ knows what else, it’s not normal. When IT is clamping IT’s jaws down onto Stan’s head, and all he can see is bright white light, and all he can smell is death, and all he can hear is IT’s growling and his own pathetic whimpers, feeling IT’s teeth sink into his face and knowing that this is the end, it _must_ be, it isn’t normal, it’s not normal at all. None of it is.

He feels a little normal, though, when he’s sitting in the field, in the circle with his friends. Not about the context of the situation. Not about _why_ they’re sitting in this circle at all, or why Eddie’s arm is broken, or why Stan’s face is wrapped in bandages ( _That_ had been fun to explain to his parents. He couldn’t tell them he left the house, so he’d made up some bullshit story about accidentally breaking his mirror, and they had believed him _somehow,_ even though Stan is a terrible liar.), or why Bev is sitting here and explaining what she saw in the deadlights.

That isn’t normal, but Stan is with his friends again, and it’s _summer_ (no matter how much Bill hates to hear it), and Stan feels a little better right there.

Just a little.

And yet he can feel something changing. He can _feel_ some sort of gravitational pull, the same that had brought them all together, now tearing the Losers apart. He knows Bev is moving for Portland tomorrow, and he can’t bear to see her go. It’s not fair, that once they finally get rid of IT, Bev has to leave forever.

“What about me?” he hears himself ask. “What do I look like?”

He sees a glimmer of something dark and confused in Bev’s eyes, or at least, he thinks he does. It must have been a trick of the light.

“The same...just taller,” she says, and he smiles and looks down at his feet.

And there he can see a shard of green glass, late afternoon sunlight reflecting off of it, broken from some forgotten Coke bottle a long time ago. Stan reaches for it, turns it over in his fingers, careful not to cut himself on the sharp edge. He frowns down at it. The field down here isn’t particularly clean, but the Derry Environmental Club had just done a voluntary trash pickup last weekend. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that they’d overlooked something, or maybe someone had come down here since then and broken a bottle just for fun once they were finished with it, but Stan knows, somehow, that that isn’t true.

This bottle’s here for a reason, just like they are.

Stan makes another big decision, hoping that this one might yield better results.

“We should swear it,” he says, standing. “A blood oath. A promise. We’ll swear that if IT isn’t dead, if we didn’t kill IT, and if IT comes back...We’ll come back, too. We’ll come home, when we’re older, and we’ll find IT. And we’ll kill IT.”

The others stand there, watching him, and Stan understands their silence for what it is: agreement.

Stan swallows, lifts the glass, because he was the one who had the idea, so he should be the first to go. His hand quivers for an instant.

_Fucking cardinals._

The point of the glass jerks towards Stan’s wrist, almost cuts his vein. Stan isn’t sure if that had been an accident, at least not all the way. He can see Bill’s eyes widen at the movement, and Stan squeezes his eyes shut and stabs the glass into his palm.

It hurts a lot, and Stan whimpers quietly in pain, feeling the warm blood gush all over his skin. He hates the blood, he hates the mess it’s making, but he wrenches his eyes open and moves to the person to his left, Ben.

Ben cringes as the glass makes contact with his hand, but doesn’t make a sound. Bev barely shows any sign of registering the cut at all, just a slight twitch of her eye. Bill fixes his gaze stoically ahead, staring into Stan’s eyes like a man on a mission. Richie swears when the shard pierces his skin, and pats Eddie comfortingly on the shoulder when it’s his turn. And last is Mike, who doesn’t do anything but exhale softly when Stan slices into his palm.

Stan takes his place back in the circle, grasps Mike’s right hand and Ben’s left. The others follow suit making the circle complete, and even though Stan’s cut brushes painfully against Mike’s skin, he bears it. Mike gives his hand a gentle squeeze, and Stan bears it.

And then it’s over, and they all drop their hands, and Stan is the first to leave the circle.

“I hate you,” he tells Bill, but he doesn’t really mean it, and they all laugh.

Stan goes home, and resumes his seemingly never-ending punishment of staying in his room, staring at the ceiling. Ben had been nice enough to let Stan borrow a few new books, but he doesn’t feel like reading now. He feels...He feels...

He doesn’t know.

He falls asleep at some point. His mother wakes him up in the morning and asks him to go to the store to buy milk, because apparently Stan _can_ go out, as long as it’s on an errand. It’s a grayer sort of day, much different than yesterday, the promise of rain on the horizon. Stan makes it to the supermarket in a light drizzle, pulling his yellow slicker closer around himself, but it starts to pour as soon as he makes it past the produce section.

He grabs a pack of bubblegum, just for himself, that he can enjoy in his room. There aren’t many people in the store today. All of the employees look fairly bored. The only customers seem to be a few old ladies. Stan walks a little swifter when he sees Mrs. Goldstein, who had been at his bar mitzvah and would certainly jump at the chance to tell Stan off for his... _incident_ (not that he hasn’t heard it a million times already from a million different mouths), and manages to make it to the back of the store, where the refrigerators are.

He isn’t alone. Beverly is there.

She doesn’t look surprised to see him.

“Stan,” she murmurs.

Stan walks up to her. “I - I thought you were leaving today.”

“I am,” she says. “Well, I was. It seems like it’s going to be tomorrow, actually. Lot of things to work out.” She scuffs her shoe against the linoleum. “I would have tried to hang out with you guys some more, but my Aunt Polly has me running all sorts of errands, and there’s a lot of packing to do, so. I couldn’t.”

Stan nods. “Yeah.”

He knows this isn’t a coincidence that they’re both here, buying milk, at the same time of day, in the same grocery store.

“I’ll miss you,” Stan says. “We all will.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” Bev says. “I’ll call you all. Every day if I can.”

Stan smiles, but it feels more like a grimace. “You’d better.”

But somehow he knows she won’t, and he can almost feel that she knows it, too. Because Derry isn’t like anywhere else, and even if IT is (hopefully) dead, or hibernating, Derry isn’t letting go.

“Stan,” she mutters, stepping closer, lifting the hood of his rain slicker back. Stan hadn’t even realized he’d kept it up.

“Yeah?”

“Your face.” She runs her fingers lightly against the bandages, awkwardly positioned around Stan’s head and causing his hair to bunch up horribly.

“It’s ok,” he tells her. “The doctor says the scars won’t be super noticeable.”

The scars won’t be noticeable, but there will still be scars.

“You’re very beautiful,” Stan blurts. “I don’t mean that in like a...well, _you know._ I don’t mean it like _that._ But it’s true.”

Bev drops her hand. “Everyone always says that.”

“But they’re all talking about your hair, or your body,” Stan says quickly. “I mean, those are pretty, yeah, but I mean your personality, Bev. And I think someone else knows it, too.”

He’s talking about Ben. Bev knows that he’s talking about Ben.

“I know,” she says, smiling to herself. “Thank you, Stanley. I think you’re beautiful, too.”

Stan rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Even though I have scars?”

Bev rolls her eyes playfully. “Scars don’t matter, do they?”

“No, I guess not.”

She smiles.

“Can I kiss you?” Stan asks, and immediately claps his hands to his mouth.

“Sorry, I...I don’t know what...I don’t...you don’t have to...,” he stammers, turning red.

“Stan,” Bev says. “I know you don’t. I don’t, either. You’re my friend. We’re friends. It’s ok.”

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“Kiss me,” she supplies.

“Ok,” he says, and does.

It’s Stan’s first kiss, and it’s not anything particularly... _special,_ in that sense, except it _is,_ kind of _._ Maybe because there’s no love in it. No romantic love, at least. But it still means something, something deeper than words. It only lasts about five seconds, but Bev’s hand is warm on Stan’s cheek, and Stan sort of awkwardly rests his hands on Bev’s hips.

It’s sweet.

  
Bev breaks off. “That wasn’t terrible,” she says. “Keep that up and you’ll take all the girls’s breaths away.”

“Shut up,” Stan says, grinning, and he doesn’t know how to tell her that he doesn’t want to kiss a girl, not right now, at least, because _he_ isn’t a girl, is he?

He recognizes the irony in this statement, as he has just finished kissing Bev, who is most certainly female.

“I’ll see you later?” Bev asks, and Stan nods.

“Someday, I hope.”

“Yeah, me too.”

And with one backwards glance, a deeply sad look in her eyes that Stan can’t place, she’s gone.

Stan sighs thoughtfully. And grabs the milk.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Goldstein,” he says cheerily, knowing she’s just witnessed the entire scenario. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

She stares at him. No doubt she’s going to tell his parents that Stan has been kissing girls in the dairy aisle. Not like he cares anymore.

_Lovely day, indeed,_ Stan thinks, and walks back out into the pouring rain.

And the next day, once Bev is gone for good, Stan’s parents finally unground him.

“But we’re still very disappointed in you,” Dad says. “In fact, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to forgive this. And if you put another toe out of line, you’re right back to being punished.”

Stan just hopes they don’t hear about when he kissed Bev.

He doesn’t even care so much about that, because after almost a month, he’s finally _free._ He can go wherever he wants. He can do whatever he wants to do. He can hang out with whoever he wants to hang out with.

Well. He can’t hang out with Bev. And he wishes he could.

Stan hops on his bike, and lets the wheels take him wherever they want to go first. He zones out, thinks about all the bird-watching he’s got to catch up on, all the movies he needs to see with Richie.

He isn’t all too surprised when he finds himself pedaling toward the Hanlons’s house.

Stan’s never actually been inside Mike’s house before. The most the Losers ever did was hang around in the barn. So Stan knows that he feels a little nervous, because he’s never met Mike’s parents one-on-one, and he wants to make a good first impression. He also knows that that’s not really the reason why he feels nervous.

He props his bike up carefully on its kickstand to the side of the driveway, positioned away from a watery puddle of mud, walks up the rickety porch steps to the door, which is peeling at the edges, and knocks.

“Hello,” Mike’s mom says when she opens the door. “Can I help you?”

“Um,” Stan says. “I’m Mike’s friend. Stanley Uris?”

Mrs. Hanlon furrows her brow for a moment, before smiling with recognition. “Oh, of course. Come on in, I’ll call Mike down for you.”

Stan shuffles in and carefully closes the door behind him. The inside of the house is charming. Cluttered, but not _messy,_ like Richie’s bedroom. More like _cozy._ Warm in a way that Stan’s own immaculately clean and cold home is not.

“Mike! There’s a friend here to see you!” Mrs. Hanlon calls up the stairs. She turns to Stan, smiling warmly, just like how Mike smiles. “I’ll make you two some lemonade, alright?”

“Oh, thank you,” Stan says politely. The creak of the stairs announce Mike’s arrival. He looks surprised to see Stan, but not disappointed. He grins.

“Hey, Stan. Parents unground you?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, a little embarrassed in case Mike’s mom thinks he’s some sort of bad kid for being grounded. She takes no notice of what Mike had said, just continues to bustle around the kitchen with a pitcher and a bag of sugar.

“Come on,” Mike says, and Stan follows him up the stairs and through a door with a sign reading _Mike’s Room._

Mike’s bedroom is not messy, not even cluttered, but it still manages to be cozy in a way that makes Stan smile. The bed is carefully made, and there’s a bookshelf, and a few pennants for different football teams. The room is plain, but Stan doesn’t mind. He likes plain.

“So, what’s up?” Mike asks, sitting down on his bed. He pats the spot next to him, and Stan sits.

“Nothing much. I just wanted to hang with someone since I’m not grounded anymore.”

“Bill and Richie and the others were busy?” Mike asks. “You tried them first, right?”

Stan frowns. “No, I didn’t. I came here first.”

“Oh,” Mike says, lips parted slightly in surprise. He shrugs. “Ok.”

“What, did you think I wouldn’t want to hang out with you?” Stan asks incredulously.

“It’s not that,” Mike says sheepishly. “It’s just, you’ve known the others for longer, and they live closer to you, so...”

“I’ve known you longer than I’ve known Ben,” Stan points out. “Besides, I wanted to hang out with you. I like you.”

Mike grins a little. “Thanks. I like you, too.”

“That’s what Losers do. Like each other,” Stan says, but he can feel his face burning slightly at Mike’s words.

“Have you talked to Bev at all?” Mike asks, swiftly changing the subject. “I know she left, but did you see her again? After the...after the field?”

Stan notices that he doesn’t say the words _blood oath._ The scar on his palm twinges pathetically.

“Uh, yeah I saw her at the store,” Stan says. “When I went to get milk.”

“What’d you say?” Mike asks. “I wish I could see her again,” he adds wistfully.

“Me too,” Stan says. “And we just talked, for a little bit. About stuff. And...” He trails off. He can’t tell Mike that he’d kissed Beverly. It would be too _weird._ He can’t.

“And?”

“And she said she’d call,” Stan finishes.

“I hope so,” Mike says, but even he seems to know that she won’t.

“I bet she will,” Stan says, lying through his teeth.

They sit for a moment, swinging their feet off the edge of the bed, letting the breeze wafting in through the open window ruffle their hair lightly. Mike pulls out a binder and shows Stan all of his baseball cards, and for once, Stan is interested, because he actually likes baseball. When Mike’s mom calls them down, they sit out on the porch sipping the lemonade, talking and joking about their friends.

Stan knows he has to go once the sun starts to sink, so he can make it home by curfew. Even though he’s still got a few hours until he’s expected for dinner (and though he doesn’t want to admit it), he doesn’t like to be out after dark alone. He hasn’t. Not since the Standpipe.

“See you, Mikey,” he calls as he walks his bike down the drive.

“Bye, Stan,” Mike yells back. “Let’s do this again sometime!”

And Stan would really like to do that, he really would.

On his way home, Stan takes the way over the Kissing Bridge, toward Bassey Park. And there, crouched in front of the fence of the bridge, Stan sees

“Richie? What are you doing?” Stan asks.

Richie jumps as though having a sudden spasm, and stands quicker than lightning. He steps in front of where he’d just been kneeling, and Stan knows Richie. He knows Richie’s mannerisms. He knows that Richie is trying to hide something.

“Stan!” Richie says. “What are you - Why are _you_ here?”

“I was going to ask you the same question,” Stan says, quirking an eyebrow.

“Ok, well,” Richie says, looking like a deer in headlights. “You first.”

“I was just biking back here on my way from Mike’s house,” Stan answers, and he hopes the way his ears burn isn’t visible to Richie in this light.

Richie makes some lame excuse about looking at all the carvings for a joke, to make fun of all the sappy messages, but Stan doesn’t miss the way his hand moves quickly into his pocket. Stan isn’t completely sure what Richie’s just put there, but he’d bet money that it’s a knife.

“Are you ok?” Stan asks him, because Richie does look very pale and sweaty and anxious.

“I’m fantastic, Stan the Man,” he answers, grinning somewhat shakily, and Stan knows that if Richie’s not going to tell him why he’s here, then he’s just simply not going to tell him.

“Arcade?” Stan offers, and Richie grins a little wider, a little more real.

But as they walk their bikes back over the bridge, Stan sneaks a chance glance behind him. And though a new carving is often hard to discern among the many that litter the wood surface of the bridge’s railing, Stan can tell right away which one is Richie’s.

He isn’t surprised. He thinks Ben would love to see it. Would think it was adorable, and would want to put in his own message for Bev. Bev would probably like Richie’s carving, too.

Then Stan remembers that Bev hasn’t called yet, and feels a pit in his stomach.

That shouldn’t matter, though. She might call. Stan could be wrong. He’s certainly been wrong before.

And he doesn’t want to think about it now, because right now, he and his best friend are going to the arcade, and there they will play games and have fun, and try to ignore the ridiculous feelings they have for boys they like too much.

And so time passes on, and Bev doesn’t call, and Stan’s parents are the same, though a little less happy with all the time he spends with his friends, because apparently they’re still under the impression that Stan acted out at his bar mitzvah because his friends influenced him to. Which is just. Complete bullshit, but ok.

Stan tries not to let himself be affected by Mom and Dad’s withering glances toward his friends (shot at Richie nine times out of ten), but it’s difficult. When your own parents don’t approve of the people you hang out with, even if they’re perfectly fine people, the _best_ people, it messes with your head. Stan thinks that there’s nothing he will ever be able to do to please them. Then he realizes he’s past _wanting_ to please them anymore.

So Stan ignores his parents and keeps going out with his friends, and once the school year is in full swing, devotes himself to homework as usual. He’s got to maintain his grades, and that’s not for his parents, it’s for him. Bad grades mean no success, and Stan doesn’t know what he’ll do if he doesn’t succeed.

_Probably cry,_ a voice in his head whispers. _Probably_ die.

Stan recognizes the voice, but only vaguely. It’s the taunting tone, the high-pitched zing of the words, the manipulating tongue. The voice scares him. He doesn’t want to listen to it, but sometimes it comes in the night, when he’s vulnerable, and makes his scars itch.

By the time Stan is fifteen, he doesn’t remember where he even _got_ the scars on his face. He remembers telling his parents he’d broken his mirror, so that must be true. But for some reason, that doesn’t sound right to him. The memory is murky, like he’s trying to stare through lake water, looking for some fish

_(turtle)_

or something. But the mirror story must be right, because what else would it have been?

It doesn’t matter where he got them anyway, what bothers Stan the most is how _ugly_ the scars are. They’re unattractive, thin white lines marring the edges of his face, like a dotted line in a coloring book that tells you where you’re supposed to cut the paper. You can’t see them from afar, but if you’re right up close, they’re obvious.

Stan _hates_ them.

“They’re n-not so bad,” Bill says encouragingly. “Lots of people have scars, St-Stan.”

“Yeah,” Stan says unhappily. “But they don’t have scars on their _face._ ”

“Come on,” Ben says, smiling kindly. “You can’t even see them. I bet the average person doesn’t even know they’re there.”

“ _I_ know they’re there,” Stan mumbles, but more to himself than anyone else.

He doesn’t think too much about the scars unless he’s alone at night, because most of Stan’s evenings are taken up by baseball practice now. It had actually been Eddie who’d encouraged him to try out for the team (“Dude, I’m unlearning the entire concept of _asthma._ Baseball is easy. Do what you love.”), and Stan had done it without much hope, not expecting anything to come out of it.

But then Coach Fenwick had told Stan that even _he’d_ been impressed with how fast Stan could run.

“You gotta have fast runners on a team,” Coach had said. “That’s baseball. But, Uris, you’re like _lightning._ And I’ve seen you throw a ball. You could be the best damn pitcher in Maine. Hell, you don’t even have to play pitcher, you’d _still_ be good.”

Stan’s never been told he’s that good at something, not by an adult, not like that. Yeah, his mother says he’s good at piano, and Dad compliments his birdwatching skills, but the things that Fenwick had told him had made Stan feel _good_ about himself, and that’s not something he can often claim.

Of course Stan’s a good runner. He’s been running all his damn life.

Stan spends evenings at baseball practice, and then he’ll go get a milkshake with Richie(who plays percussion in the marching band, which is gross _)_ or Bill or Mike or whoever, and then he’ll go home, do his homework, and slip into a (hopefully) dreamless sleep. Sometimes, when the sleep isn’t dreamless, and the shadows seem to move towards him, closer and closer, he’ll call Mike. And Mike always picks up, no matter how late it is, and he’s never annoyed. He’ll just soothe Stan, talk to him quietly until he’s ready to drift off again.

It’s the shit like that that makes Stan fall in love with Mike more. It’s _annoying,_ actually, how much he feels for him. He wish it would stop. He also wishes it would keep going forever.

Look, Stan’s not one to deal with emotions much, ok? He tends to keep things bottled up, until they either spill over somewhat quietly or the pressure builds up too high and it bursts like a firework. He can understand how his friends are feeling, he can help them, and can give them advice, but he can’t face his own problems. He can’t be his own psychiatrist. It’s too much.

He wishes he could talk to Bev. Not for advice, but just in general. Bev always seemed to know what to say. She was just cool like that.

Stan misses her.

“I’m moving,” Bill tells them, and now Bev isn’t the only one Stan’s missing.

Bill is like their glue. Stan fears that if he moves, the Losers really _will_ be torn apart for good. Bill goes, and Stan hates him for it, and the Losers aren’t torn apart, but they’re worse than they were before, definitely. It’s like they can’t function without all seven of them there.

Seven is an important number. It’s the number of days of mourning. It’s the number of blessings recited under the _chuppah_ at weddings. It’s the number of Losers, and with only five left, it all feels wrong.

The night after Bill moves to Bangor, Stan wakes up in a cold sweat. The nightmare he’d had had been a recurring one, or at least, he thinks so, because he can’t recall everything that happens in it. It’s always at the old Derry Standpipe in Memorial Park, and Stan doesn’t know if he’s always thought this, or if it’s just because of the nightmares, but he’s very wary of the place. And for some odd reason, the dream is about a cardinal. Stan doesn’t know why. Cardinals don’t usually fly this far north. And why would a bird scare him? He loves birds.

But the image of the bright red cardinal flits through his mind again, and Stan shivers violently.

_Fucking cardinals._

The dial tone is sounding before he even realizes what he’s doing. The phone receiver is slick against the sweat in his palm, cold where he’s holding it against his ear.

It’s 1991, and Stan is still in love with Mike Hanlon. His heart races.

“Stan?” his tired voice says, no hint of bitterness in it. He’d already known it was him.

“Hi,” Stan croaks.

“Same dream?” Mike asks.

“Yeah,” Stan says, and it comes out jilted, the words catching on his shaky breaths. Stan’s heart’s in his throat and his stomach is somewhere on the floor.

“Hey, it’s ok. Breathe in with me, yeah? In...out...in...out. Yeah, you’re doing good. That’s really good, Stanny.”

Stan exhales softly. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t be,” Mike says, and then, “Is your light on?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. Do you want to talk about the nightmare, or do you want to talk about your day?”

“Today,” Stan mutters.

“Ok.” He’s so patient, it’s almost irritating.

“I passed a test in biology today. Kendra Wesnek told me I did a good job,” Stan says slowly. “And I ate lunch with Richie and Eddie and Ben, and Ben was writing poems down in his notebook, and Richie was trying to shove a celery stick up Eddie’s nose, and then he got mashed potatoes in my hair, which was kind of annoying. But I managed to get it out ok.”

Mike laughs a breathy laugh. “I’m glad. Wouldn’t want to see the famous curls messed up.”

It’s a joke, and a joke is all it is, but it doesn’t _feel_ like a joke. Not to Stan.

“Yeah,” he laughs, ignoring the pang in his chest. “Then I went to baseball practice, which went really well. Richie got out of band at the same time I finished up, and we grabbed Eddie and went to the diner. Ben couldn’t come, because he was finishing up a science project.”

“You weren’t too much of a third wheel next to Richie and Eddie?”

Stan laughs. “No, I...well, what do you mean?”

“You know,” Mike says, sounding amused. “They’re Richie and Eddie. They have their own separate thing going on.”

“Right,” Stan says. “Sometimes I wonder about them.”

“Me too,” Mike says, and then: “I honestly think Richie’s in love with him.”

Stan’s heart misses a beat. “That’s not a joke? You’re not joking?”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”

“I agree,” Stan says. “I think he loves him.”

“Hm.” Mike sounds lost in thought. “Maybe they’ll figure that out someday.”

“Maybe. I think we’ve all got a lot of things to figure out.”

“Well, let’s figure them out together,” Mike suggests. Stan breathes out.

“Together,” he clarifies.

“Yeah.” Mike sounds so...like it doesn’t even matter to him.

Stan feels exposed. Open. _Raw,_ and he doesn’t know why.

“How was your day - “ he starts to say.

“I wish I could hold your hand,” Mike says, all in a rush, cutting him off.

“Wha - What?” Stan stammers.

“I want to hold your hand,” Mike rasps. He sounds more awake than he has all night, and yet more asleep than Stan’s ever heard him. “I don’t know why. I don’t know if I have a reason. I think it would be nice. I don’t think I’m supposed to want to, but I _do._ I want - I _do._ ”

“Mike...,” Stan says. “What are we doing?”

“I don’t know. I know you’re my friend. You’re my friend, and I wish you were with me, so I could hold your hand. Am I fucking things up? I don’t know what I’m saying. I think I’m dreaming, maybe. I don’t really know.”

“Mike, _please...,_ ” Stan whispers. God, he’s going to _die._

“What, Stan? What?” Mike asks. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it, I don’t care.”

Stan’s at a complete loss for words.

“I’m going to go to sleep,” he says finally. “And tomorrow, when we have movie night, you can hold my hand, if you like.”

“I don’t think I’m going to remember this conversation tomorrow,” Mike tells him, voice scratchy. “To be perfectly honest.”

“I’ll remember it for you,” Stan tells him. “Goodnight, Mikey.”

“Night, Stanny. Love you.” He hangs up.

Stan has no idea what just happened, but he’s feeling confused, and embarrassed, and lost, and giddy all at once.

He doesn’t understand Mike. He doesn’t understand why they’re always dancing around each other. He doesn’t know if Mike likes him back, and if he does, does he even know it? Is Stan _allowed_ to think about these things? Is Stan _allowed_ to feel so much for Mike?

It’s annoying, how _amazing_ Mike is. He’s unfairly smart, and pretty, and kind, and understanding, and he’d just sleepily told Stan how he wishes he could hold his hand, and what is Stan supposed to do with that information? Forget about it? Keep it secret? Never bring it up to Mike, not ever? How is he supposed to do that?

Stan falls asleep, and when he wakes up, wonders if it was all just a dream he dreamed.

At movie night, Mike doesn’t hold his hand, so it must have been. Mike shows no recollection of the previous night’s conversation.

But he doodles a picture of a bird on a napkin for Stan, and Stan tucks it into his pocket, smiling, and later presses it between the pages of his birdwatching journal.

He’s very confused, and very, very emotional. Mike Hanlon has a way of doing that to him.

And then the worst thing that could possibly happen, happens.

Stan’s parents decide to move to Atlanta. Atlanta, which is over a thousand miles from Derry. Atlanta, which is far, far away from the Losers.

Stan never wanted to be the one to break the group up further, but Stan rarely seems to get what he wants.

“Sorry,” Mom says, not sounding sorry at all. “It’ll be a nice change from small town Derry, don’t you agree?”

“And who knows,” Dad says indifferently. “Maybe you’ll be happier in Georgia. You can make some new friends.”

“I don’t want to make _new_ friends,” Stan tells them helplessly. “My friends are _here._ ”

But they don’t listen to him. Not like they ever do.

Stan calls Mike to tell him right away, barely keeping the tears from spilling. He tries to call Richie, also, but nobody picks up the phone.

He tells the rest of the Losers the next day at school.

“Does Mike know?” Richie asks, and Stan nods, hoping Richie isn’t hurt that he didn’t tell him first. Richie doesn’t say anything, just pulls Stan into a hug. And _fuck,_ Stan’s going to miss Richie! He’s going to miss all of them, obviously, but maybe Richie the most, because Richie was Stan’s first friend, and for a while, his only friend. And yeah, he’s gross, and he’s loud, and he doesn’t know when to shut up, and he usually smells like weed or nicotine, but he’s Stan’s best friend. He’s going to miss him.

He’s going to miss Rich, and he’s going to miss Ben’s hugs, and Eddie’s smiles, and Mike’s... _everything,_ and Stan really, _really_ doesn’t want to go. He knows Derry is bad. He hates Derry with a passion. He just wishes that he and the other Losers could run away. He wishes they could go find Bill, and Bev, and go live somewhere together, somewhere not like Derry, somewhere beautiful, with lots of birds.

But he can’t live in a fantasy, and that perfect world with all of his friends is never going to exist. Stan knows that once he leaves Maine, he’s not going to remember anything, or anyone. It happened to Bev. It happened to Bill. It’s going to happen to Stan, whether he likes it or not.

And, _God,_ he doesn’t like it.

Stan hangs out with the other Losers as much as he can, trying to relish in the months he has left with them, but the days slip by faster and faster, and Stan’s running out of time. He’s running out of time, and he’s running out of patience, and he’s running out of a lot things. He feels like a caged bird. He wants to be _free._

“Hey, uh, Stanley,” says Kendra Wesnek, Stan’s lab partner in biology. “I was, um,wondering, if maybe you wanted to go to the movies with me tomorrow night?”

Stan blinks. “What?”

Kendra flushes. “I’ve always thought you were kind of _cute,_ you know? I don’t know if you know that. And I just wanted to know if a date would be something you’d be...interested in.”

Oh, this is _awkward._

“Listen,” he tells her. “Kendra, I think you’re really sweet and pretty, but I’m not really looking for a relationship right now, and - “

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she says, wringing her hands. “I don’t even know you that well,and you’re moving, aren’t you? You _are,_ aren’t you? I’m sorry, but you’re always so nice to me, and I thought, maybe you were _interested_ in me, but I guess you’re not, and I shouldn’t have assumed, and I’m really - “

“Kendra,” Stan says, panicked. “I’m gay.”

Kendra stares. “What?”

“I’m - ,” Stan starts, and then stops. What the fuck is he talking about? “Well, no, I’m - I’m not gay, but I like boys, and I think you’re really nice, and you deserve to know _why_ I won’t go out with you, and, uh, the reason is because I’m, I’m in love with a boy.”

Kendra’s mouth falls open.

What the fuck is Stan _doing?_ What the fuck is he doing, oh God, he hasn’t even told _Richie_ this stuff, and he’s just told his _lab partner?_ What the fuck is wrong with him? Oh fuck, he’s ruined everything. Stan’s hand unconsciously moves to his ear.

“Oh,” Kendra says simply. “Ok.”

“I’m sorry?” Stan says.

“Don’t be,” Kendra tells him, but she seems closed off. “You can’t help it.”

“Look, just,” Stan pleads. “Just don’t tell anyone, ok?”

“Sure,” Kendra drones. “I won’t tell.”

Well, that’s a relief.

Stan is an _asshole._ He’s probably just broken this poor girl’s heart or something! Not that it matters to him too much, since he’s leaving in a week, but it must matter to _Kendra,_ right? She’s going to remember this and forever hate Stan for ruining her chances at getting a boyfriend. And why had Stan said all that shit about being gay? Stan’s not even _gay,_ he just _really_ likes Mike. Ugh, _fuck,_ he’s fucking everything up.

But maybe this is a good thing, too, in a way. Stan’s never told anyone about his feelings for Mike, and maybe he needed a push like this to get the ball rolling. Maybe he’ll be able to tell Richie now?

He still feels bad about Kendra. He hopes she won’t tell anyone.

“Hey, Stan,” Eddie greets. He’s been waiting for Stan outside. “How was bio?”

Stan shoulders his bag strap nervously. “Uh, it was fine.”

Eddie frowns. “You ok? You look a little sick.”

“I’m fine,” Stan says. And then,

“Have you ever been in love?” Stan feels like he already knows the answer to this question.

  
Eddie blushes. “Wh- Uh, what do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Stan says breathlessly. “Just wondering.”

Eddie swallows. “I - I don’t - I...I don’t think so,” he says, but he won’t meet Stan’s eyes.

“Why?” he asks, eyes fixed on his sneakers. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Yeah,” Stan murmurs. “I have.”

“Well, I - ,” Eddie says, looking like he wants to say more, but just then Richie appears, throws his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and starts to babble nonstop about his day.

Eddie looks at Stan almost fearfully from under Richie, like he knows what Stan’s thinking, like he knows that Stan knows. Stan just smiles and nods. Eddie seems to relax, or at least, Stan hopes he does.

Emotions are so damn confusing.

Kendra doesn’t tell everyone Stan’s secret, though it isn’t like it matters. Not when Stan’s leaving so soon. And, fuck, he’s leaving soon.

Ben makes him a goodbye card, with a poem about birds in it. Stan puts it in his journal, next to Mike’s napkin drawing and a ticket from last year’s Fall Fair, and hopes that if he ever looks back on these relics of his life, he’ll understand what they mean to him.

He knows that he won’t.

Stan’s got two days until he’s supposed to move to Georgia, and he goes out with Richie in his truck and gets higher than he’s ever gotten in his life.

Not that Stan gets high often. But this is a special occasion.

“I don’t think my parents are ever going to like you,” Stan says later, basking in the red dusky sky of clouds. “‘M’sorry about that, Rich.”

Richie snorts. “Like I give a shit. I don’t care what your parents think of me, so long as they can live with the fact that I’m best friends with their son.”

Stan feels as if Richie isn’t being entirely truthful. But he often thinks that about Richie, because Richie projects a version of himself all the time, that makes jokes and doesn’t take things seriously, and it’s only at Richie’s most vulnerable moments where Stan can see how raw he can get.

“They _have_ lived with it, Trashmouth,” Stan says.

“Well, they won’t have to anymore,” Richie says quietly, and Stan feels something in his chest twang.

“I don’t want to leave,” Stan mutters, eyes closed.

“I don’t want you to leave, either.”

And later, Richie says, “You won’t call.”

Stan knows this. Of course he knows this.

“No,” he says. “I won’t. I wish I would, but I won’t. But I won’t be _gone._ We’ll see each other again some day. It’s like Bill said. That sort of stuff doesn’t just go away.”

“Well, if you say so,” Richie replies, resting his head against Stan’s shoulder. “I miss Bill, that crazy son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, me too. And I _do_ say so. You’re not getting rid of me _that_ easily.”

Richie grins.

And Stan knows this is his last chance. His last chance to ask Richie, to find out the truth, to _tell_ Richie the truth, even if he won’t remember doing it. Maybe it’s the weed. Maybe it’s the fact that Stan’s leaving. Hell, maybe it’s Kendra fucking Wesnek, but Stan’s got to do this now.

“Are you in love with Eddie?” he asks, and that does it.

Richie stares at him. “How did you know?”

Stan thinks that’s a stupid question. But maybe it isn’t to someone other than him. “I could just tell.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Richie asks, sounding almost fearful.

“No, Rich, I don’t think it’s weird.” He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to tell him the rest. How he’s going to find the right words to tell Richie that they’re similar in more ways than he understands.

“Are you in love with Mike?” Richie asks, and Stan realizes that he never has to tell Richie anything. He just _knows._

“Yeah. I think so.” He _knows_ so.

“Oh.”

“You knew?”

“Yeah. You’re my best friend.”

“I know.”

He knows.

“I’m sorry, Rich.”

“For what?”

“Moving.”

And they lie in the truck bed and stare at the sky, not really talking. Stan wishes he could say more, but he doesn’t think the words would come out if he tried. What would he tell him, anyway, if he could?

Probably everything. Probably everything.

Stan’s a coward. He knows this, he’s _known_ this, but it’s even more apparent now. He can’t tell Mike how he feels about him. He _should,_ he feels like he owes Mike this much, and he’s leaving. He should tell him. But he can’t. It’s different. Mike isn’t Richie, he’s...he’s what Stan’s afraid of, a little bit.

“Come with me to the quarry,” he tells Mike on his last night in Derry, after he’s already said his last tearful goodbyes to Richie and Ben and Eddie.

Mike doesn’t question it, and for that, Stan is grateful.

He tries to tell Mike. He really does. But the words just stick in his throat, and refuse to come out. Stan wants to tell Mike all of it. How he makes him feel, how unfairly perfect he is, how nice he is to not just Stan, but to everyone, and how that fills Stan up until he starts to unravel. How he’s been the only person Stan’s ever had feelings for, and how Stan wishes he could do something about it.

Nothing comes out. Stan doesn’t say anything.

“I used to call you Bird Boy,” Mike tells him. 

Stan’s throat finally unsticks. “What?”

And Mike explains the nickname he’d used to call Stan in his head, when he didn’t know his name, just he knew he liked birds.

Stan wonders if Mike would have given any random person on the street a nickname like that, or if it’s just Stan. He wouldn’t know what it meant if it were the latter.

“Too bad we never got to bird-watch together before I moved,” Stan hears himself say. “I know why you can’t, though,” he adds, because he remembers, vaguely, that Mike is afraid of birds. Maybe not all birds, maybe one bird specifically. It’s foggy, and he can’t remember.

But isn’t that ironic? A bird-lover, falling in love with someone who doesn’t like birds?

It’s funny.

It’s sad.

“I would have done it,” Mike tells him, shaking his head. “I would’ve done it today if you’d asked me. It doesn’t matter. I would’ve done anything you asked.”

Stan swallows back the lump in his throat. He feels like crying. “I wish we had.”

“Me too.”

And then he buries his face into Mike’s shoulder, Mike wraps his arms around him, and Stan cries.

And Mike just lets him do it.

Stan falls into a dreamless sleep that night. An unhappy sleep, at that. He’s very unhappy. He’s never felt so _empty._

The next morning dawns grey and bleak, just like Stan’s mood. He doesn’t say much to his parents, just moves through the motions of his day like he’s on autopilot, packing up the last of his things and saying goodbye to the house he’s lived in his whole life.

The last thing Stan remembers before leaving town is seeing the sign for Hanlon Farms, and feeling the urge to jump out of the car and run towards it.

Then, he closes his eyes and lets the whine of the car’s motor lull him to sleep again.

He wakes up an hour later, and feels emptier than ever.

He doesn’t know why.

Atlanta is a nice city, there’s no denying that. Stan will forever be grateful that his parents picked here to move to, and not literally any other area of Georgia, because Atlanta’s not so bad after a while. It’s big, and it’s noisy, and it’s nothing like Stan’s ever really experienced (except when visiting his grandmother in Brooklyn). It’s a change. It’s nice, and after a couple of months, Stan decides that he likes it in the city.

There’s this itch in the back of his head, though, in his brain, in his _thoughts,_ that he just can’t seem to scratch. He always feels like he’s forgotten something. Something big and important. It’s a feeling that infuriates Stan, knowing he can do nothing about it. It makes his head hurt and his eyes twitch, and there’s no remedy but memory, and these memories just don’t _want_ to be remembered.

It’s annoying, is what it is.

Sometimes, Stan will go through his bird journal. He does this less and less now, since the only birds that are in the city are a few sparrows and a hell of a lot of pigeons _(Columba domestica)._ It makes Stan sad to let go of his lifelong hobby and passion, so in the first six months or so that he spends living in Atlanta, he often finds himself flipping through the pictures and facts in the book, reading the records of birds he’d seen ages ago. Pressed in between the pages are a ticket for a fair (the cheaply inked letters forming the name of the town have been smeared carelessly, rendering it illegible), a card with a poem about birds from somebody named Ben, and a napkin with a sketch of a bird, seemingly a cardinal, on it.

The ticket has little significance to Stan. It’s just some relic of his childhood, from some day he must have spent at the carnival (even knowing this, he still can’t bring himself to throw it out). The card however, and the napkin...they ring something deep in Stan’s chest. He doesn’t know a Ben, doesn’t think he’s _ever_ known a Ben, but the poem is beautiful, better even than some Stan has seen in poetry books. He goes to the library to try and research the poet, but finds nothing, and assumes that whoever Ben is must have written it himself.

The napkin is different. It’s slightly furled at the edges, though Stan fights to smooth it out. The sketch of the bird is done in pencil, and some of the strokes are bold and obvious, while others are faint, barely there, just skims across the thin paper. It’s nothing particularly special. It’s no da Vinci (though it’s exceptionally well drawn as it is). But for some reason, Stan feels odd when he looks at it, and he gets a lump in his throat. Whoever had given this to Stan was someone special. He just wishes he knew who it was.

After a while, say, a year, Stan stops looking through his journal as much. The things inside of it stop sticking around in his head for as long as they used to. Eventually, he forgets about it entirely, and it sits in a box in his closet, pages getting slightly musty.

Stan used to remember the things he’d forgotten. Then, he’d at least remembered that he’d forgotten them at all. Now, he doesn’t think about it much. Now, he doesn’t even remember that he forgot.

Stan moves through high school in Atlanta, makes friends with the people in his study group and spends his time hanging out with them. They’re all nice, all a bit nerdy like Stan, but they’re not the same. They’re not what Stan is used to. They’re too similar to his own personality, there’s nothing there to combat what Stan is like, to go up against Stan’s tidiness and wariness with a dumb smile and a corny joke.

Stan doesn’t even know what he’s used to. He’s not even sure who he’s comparing his friends _to._

“Want to go for pizza with us?” Robin will ask, and Stan will say yes.

“Define _acrid,_ ” Adam will say, and Stan will define it for him.

It’s not that he doesn’t have fun with them. It’s not that he secretly hates them. But he feels like they don’t understand him. They don’t contrast with him at all. They’re too much like _Stan_ for Stan to really enjoy hanging out with them.

_I must have once had other friends,_ Stan thinks. _I mean, every little kid has friends, and I was a little kid once. Maybe they were so good that everyone else just pales in comparison._

But if that were true, then wouldn’t Stan _remember_ these friends?

And why can’t he remember where he got his scars? They’re around his face like an ugly circle highlighting what’s wrong with him. They’re irregular, and jagged, and they’re small, yeah, but they don’t _feel_ small. None of his friends have ever commented on them. They’re probably just too nice. Stan hates the scars, because they’re just another reminder of a past he can’t recall, frustrating him to no end, no end.

Stan’s happy in the city, yes, and his parents are happy, good, but Stan feels _empty_ sometimes. Like he’s waiting for something big to happen, and it’s never going to.

Maybe it already has. Maybe he’s missed it completely.

Sounds like the sort of thing Stan would do.

Stan keeps going and going and going, not understanding, not understanding, not understanding. Sometimes he feels like he’s just moving through the motions of life on autopilot, that he’s in some sort of trance. Sometimes he fears that he’ll never be truly, one-hundred-percent happy.

Fear. That’s something Stan knows a lot of.

He has nightmares. They come and go, each one more vivid than the last, leaving him for just enough time before creeping back up on him when he least expects it. They’re usually the same things. Red balloons. Dripping water. Zombie children. A giant circular white building, with a great iron door. Sometimes, a horrible, horrible face, a clown’s face, done up in white and red greasepaint, leering, _smiling._ Birds, more often than not, and Stan doesn’t understand that because he _likes_ birds. But they’re always cardinals.

_Fucking cardinals, fucking cardinals, fucking cardinals,_

Always that phrase, _fucking cardinals,_ repeated over and over again, like an echo.

Stan doesn’t think he’d seen that many cardinals when he was a kid. They just didn’t fly that far north. Now that he’s in the south, he sees them often, flitting in and out of park tree branches like whizzing red bullets. Stan thinks cardinals are beautiful. He’s always thought so, when he saw pictures of them in his bird book. Now, he’s almost _afraid_ of them. They make him feel uneasy, like they’re some sort of bad omen. They make him feel jumpy. On edge.

_fucking cardinals._

Stan has nightmares, yes, but he also has dreams. Good ones. Dreams of sunlight, and pretty birds, and lakes, and the feeling of freedom when you ride down a hill on your bike, the wind pushing your hair back and making it hard to breathe. Dreams of people, too. Mostly boys. There’s one with short hair and a silver bicycle. One with a kind face and lots of books. One with big eyes and an inhaler, another with giant glasses and a stupid grin, and one is never without the other in Stan’s dreams. There’s one girl, and she has red hair and a box of cigarettes. And there’s one more boy, a boy with soft eyes and a warm smile, and Stan likes the dreams of him the most.

Sometimes he dreams of all of them. Sometimes, it’s a few of them. Sometimes it’s just one.

Stan doesn’t know who these people are, or what they mean to him, but he wishes he could find them. He wants to know if they’re alright. He doesn’t know why they wouldn’t be. He just wants to make sure, he wants to see them, he wants to _be_ with them, with the boy with the inhaler, and the boy with the glasses, and the boy with the smile.

Stan feels like he’s going in circles. He goes to school. He hangs out with his friends. He does his homework. He eats dinner with his parents. He doesn’t go to the park (he tells himself it’s because he has no time to, but really, he’s just terrified of seeing any cardinals while he’s out alone.). He’s not sad, not really. He just...he feels like his life holds no meaning anymore. Not to him, not to anyone else.

He graduates high school. Goes to college in the city to work on being an accountant (because his dad tells him to). He makes college friends, and doesn’t go to parties, but smokes the occasional joint with his roommate, a boy named Lionel who never seems to be completely sober.

And then, he meets Patty Blum.

And he falls in love.

Stan’s not sure if he’s ever fallen in love before. He feels like he might have, once. But he’d probably remember it if he had. See, this feeling of falling for someone isn’t new to him. It feels familiar. It feels different. It feels less dangerous.

Stan doesn’t care if he’s only fallen love in once, or if he’s fallen in love one hundred times.That doesn’t matter to him, because he’s in love with Patty now, and will be in love with Patty forever, he thinks.

“Hi, I’m Patricia Blum. It’s nice to meet you,” she greets upon their first meeting, at a study session in the campus library, and her hand is warm and her face is kind, and Stan sort of melts on sight. He gets this almost overwhelming sense of unexplainable déjà vu, shakes it off, hopes he isn’t turning too red, and tells her his name.

Her smile gives him the same feeling that the boy in the dream’s smile gives him. And these people in his dreams, they don’t stay kids. They’ve gotten older as Stanley has. The boy with the books has lost all of his fat, and is taller, more muscular. The boy with the bike’s hair is starting to go grey, even now. The girl with the cigarettes has bruises all over her body, and Stan hopes against hope that she’s ok. He doesn’t know why he does. He doesn’t know these people, he doesn’t know their names. For all he knows, they might not even exist at all. They could just be figments of his imagination. But still, he cares for them, and watches as the warm-smiling boy grows into a warm-smiling man.

And speaking of warm smiles...

“I was wondering,” Patty says, rushed, breathlessly, after months of studying together in the same group. “If maybe you wanted to go out to dinner with me sometime.”

Stan doesn’t even hesitate.

“I’d love to.”

By the next year of college, their relationship is still going full swing. Stan is a little worried at first that they won’t last the test of time. He knows that school relationships hardly go for too long, and usually fizzle out. Of course, it’s different in college than it is in high school, and it’s different with Patty and Stan than it is with other people.

Patty is just...well, she’s _perfect._ She’s everything all at once. Her presence is calming to Stan, and also invigorating. She laughs at Stan’s dry humor, even when she doesn’t understand it, and she lets Stan be the little spoon when he wants to be, and she always seems to know whenever Stan’s about to have a panic attack, and she’ll take him somewhere private and rub his back, tell him to take deep breaths and talk to him sweetly until he’s able to calm down. She’s too good for Stan, too good.

“Don’t say that,” she says when he tells her this. “I’m not too good for you, and you’re not too good for me. We’re perfect for each other, and you don’t have to worry, honey. It’s going to be alright with us.”

Stan swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m in love with you,” he tells her, for what must be the millionth time.

She smiles. “I know. I’m in love with you, too.”

Stan feels like crying. He almost does.

The first time Stan calls Patty “baby-love,” she almost cries, too.

They graduate, both with top marks and a satisfying education put behind them, and move into an apartment together. It’s not a big deal. There’s no huge important discussion between the two of them. They hardly even treat it as the life-altering event that it is. It just seems like the right thing to do, and so they do it.

When Stan proposes to her, it’s the right thing, too. And when Patty says yes, they both know they’re doing everything ok.

Their wedding is a big event, because both Stan and Patty’s mothers go a little crazy with the invite list and send out save the dates to practically every Jew they know, plus every non-Jew they know, too. Stan doesn’t like the crowd, but he doesn’t care, because he is married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and he’s never felt happier.

Stan’s accounting career works out yards better than he’d ever expected it to. After they get married, he starts to advance through the ranks of the corporation pretty quickly. Patty’s secretary job pays well, and pretty soon, they’re buying a big house in Oakhurst with a pretty front porch and a two car garage.

“I love you,” Patty tells him. “I’m glad I married you, Stanley, I really am. You’re the best person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Stan replies. “I thought you’d just married me for my money.”

“Ah, well,” Patty says, lips quirking up at the edges. “That certainly helps, too.”

He laughs, and she kisses him, and the world turns a little brighter still.

They live together, they’re happy together, they get older together. Mid-way through their thirties, when Stan’s parents have both passed away, Patty’s mother starts asking for grandchildren.

And, well. That’s the thing.

It’s not that Stan and Patty don’t want children. Quite the opposite, in fact. They would love to have a little boy or girl to call their own. But they’ve been trying and trying, to no avail. It just...doesn’t work. Nothing happens.

They go to a specialist, they take some tests. The doctor is baffled. He tells them that all of Patty’s eggs are fine, that Stan’s sperm is swimming normally. Patty simply isn’t getting pregnant.

The car ride home is silent. Stan’s hands stay gripped tight on the steering wheel. When they pull into the driveway, Stan puts his head in his hands and starts to cry.

Patty’s hand immediately finds his back, rubbing soothing circles in and around. “It’s ok, honey. It’s alright. It’s ok.”

“It’s not,” Stan chokes. “It’s me, I know it is. It’s my fault. It’s _me._ ”

Patty reassures him, tells him it’s no more his fault than it is hers, but Stan hears the uncertainty in her voice. She knows it, too. It’s all Stan’s fault.

Medically, it’s not Stan’s fault. Physically, it’s not Stan’s fault. But something deep in Stan’s gut, something ingrained in his psyche tells him that it _is_ his fault, and Stan knows, somehow, that it’s true. It’s the darkness that’s lived in Stan his whole life, the darkness that comes out in his nightmares and leaves him sweating. He doesn’t know why it’s there, or where it came from, but it’s been a part of him for as long as he can remember, just like the ugly scars that mar his face.

There’s something _evil_ inside of Stan. Patty knows that there is. And this thing, this _IT,_ is the reason why they can’t have children.

Stan hates himself. He always seems to fuck everything up. And while Patty tells him over and over again that she’s not too upset about it, that they don’t _have_ to have children, he knows she’s lying. 

Everything is always Stan’s fault. He’s a coward, and a liar, and a scared man, and the darkness that visits him at night won’t stop, it won’t stop.

One night he wakes in the middle of the night to find himself sitting at his desk, pen gripped firmly in hand. The paper underneath him says _fucking cardinals_ on it, in endless circles and lines. Stan feels icy inside, and throws the paper out.

But Stan does his best to shove that all aside. To forget it, and to enjoy his beautiful life with Patty. To make money, and to watch bird documentaries on Netflix, and to play chess with his wife, and to do jigsaw puzzles.

He mostly succeeds.

But sometimes, the darkness is hard to forget.

Stan rests his phone on the table, takes a deep breath, and contemplates what to do next.

Here are the facts. This is what Stan knows: His name is Stanley Uris. He is almost forty years old. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Patricia. He is an accountant. He likes to watch birds. He has just gotten a phone call from someone he knew a long time ago, and has subsequently remembered his entire childhood and everything in it.

Everything.

Stan takes another shaky, rattling breath.

“Stan?” Patty’s voice sounds as if it’s traveling through water. “Who was that, honey? Stan? Are you ok?”

Stan snaps out of it. “Yes, I’m fine. I...” He swallows thickly. “I’m going to go take a bath.”

Everything. His friends. The Losers. His bar mitzvah. The Standpipe. Georgie and the other missing kids. IT. The

_(couldn’t save us)_

Turtle.

Stan had known what he would have to do as soon as he heard Mike’s voice on the phone. He had known, almost immediately, that IT, Pennywise had come back. He had known that he would have to go back to Derry, because of the oath, the stupid blood oath that...

...that he had made. 

This is all because of him. The rest of the Losers will have to return to Derry because of what _he_ had done, all those years ago, in the field, with a shard of broken Coke bottle.

Just another awful thing that’s all Stan’s fault.

And why, _why_ did it have to be _Mike_ who’d called him? Out of everyone, of course it had been _Mike_ who had stayed behind, who had taken it upon himself to tell everyone when to come home. It couldn’t’ve been Ben, or Eddie, no, it had to be Mike. And hearing Mike speaking to him had reminded Stan of...of _everything._

Mike’s smile, and Mike’s hugs, and his kindness, and his understanding. Stan had missed that, has missed it for twenty-seven years, without even knowing it.

He’s missed all of them. He remembers them all, now. But had he ever _really_ forgotten? Those people in his dreams...they’re his friends, they’ve always _been_ his friends, and Stan had just never realized it. He’d been able to see them grow, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know a lot of things.

He’s spiraling, he’s spiraling, he’s spiraling...he’s going to spiral forever, it feels like...

Just as Stan had known all of these things when he’d picked up the phone, he’d also known, almost at once, his inevitable fate.

Stan understands that he is weak. He’s always been the weakest of the Losers, the most fragile, the least brave. There’s never been anything to suggest otherwise. The bravest is Bill, or Eddie, or Bev, but it’s not Stan. It never has been Stan.

And now it never will be.

He’s having an out-of-body experience, he must be. Either that, or this is simply a horrible, horrible dream. He doesn’t remember walking upstairs or into his study until the pen is in his hand and the seven envelopes are addressed.

He knows what he has to do.

He writes. He writes until his hand cramps. He writes until the pen starts to run out of ink. He writes until he can’t write anymore, and the envelopes are full and ready to be mailed. One for each of the Losers, and, of course, one for Patty.

He’s failed them. He’s failed them all. But if he isn’t strong enough, and he goes back, IT will kill him. If he doesn’t go, and pretends the call never happened, _they_ might die, in need of him when he could have been there. And Stan would never be able to live with that guilt.

He’s failed them all. He’s failed Richie. He’s failed Bill. He’s failed _Patty._

Patty. She won’t understand this. She _can’t_ understand this.

Stan is a terrible husband, and an even worse friend.

The Turtle couldn’t save us, that’s what Bill had said, the Turtle couldn’t save us.

_(no, the turtle couldn’t save YOU. you’re the weakest link. the coward. the turtle couldn’t save you, because there was nothing worth saving.)_

There is only one possible solution. Now that the call is over, the truth is out, and the letters are written.

Stan can’t go back to Derry.

So he will take himself off the board.

Stan locks himself in the bathroom. Runs the water. Undresses nimbly, carefully folding his clothes and placing them to the side of the tub, because even in death, he must be meticulous.

The water is warm, but it does nothing to heat Stan’s frigid body.

He’s so cold, so cold, _so cold._

But he doesn’t feel frightened. Not of what he’s about to do. He just feels sad. And...and _empty._

So empty.

_If only my friends could see me now..._

He hopes they’re happy, at least. They all deserve to be.

Stan never really deserved anything but sorrow.

Stan pushes himself up in the water, and with a slightly shaking hand, reaches for the pack of razor blades. He takes one out and just stares at it for a moment, held delicately in between his thumb and his index finger, light glinting off of the edges just so.

And he remembers, with a sudden chill, what had happened outside the Standpipe.

_Fucking cardinals,_ IT had said, and had pretended to cut IT’s wrists open wide.

IT had known. IT’s known this whole time what Stanley would do.

The _bastard._

Stan feels another tremor go up his spine when he remembers the words that had been carved into the birdbath in Memorial Park.

_Apparebat eidolon senex._

Stan's fingers find his earlobe. Funny, that a simple Latin phrase has caused him to feel so afraid.

And with a single deep breath, Stan squeezes his eyes shut and brings the razor down.

_Dear Losers,_

_I know what this must seem like, but this isn’t a suicide note. You’re probably wondering why I did what I did. It’s because I knew I was too scared to go back. And if we weren’t together? If all of us alive weren’t united? I knew we’d all die. So, I made the only logical move. I took myself off the board._

_Did it work? Well, if you’re reading this, you know the answer. I’ve lived my whole life afraid. Afraid of what would come next. Afraid of what I might leave behind._

_Don’t be. Be who you want to be. Be proud. And if you find someone worth holding on to, never, ever, let them go. Follow your own path, wherever that takes you._

_Think of this letter as a promise. A promise I’m asking you to make. To me. To each other. An oath._

_See, the thing about being a Loser is, you don’t have anything to lose._

_So, be true. Be brave. Stand. Believe._

_And don’t ever forget: We’re Losers._

_And we always will be._

_\- Stanley_

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the delay, there was like a 3 week period where i couldn't do much writing because i was involved in a school production and then it was thanksgiving break lmao
> 
> anyway, my series is finally over! if you stuck with me this whole time, thanks so much! i hope you all had as much fun reading this as i did writing it. shoutout to pix for basically being my rock. :)))


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